Australia’s most decorated living soldier arrested for war crimes and killing civilians in Afghanistan

The facts for which Roberts-Smith is accused date back to his deployment in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012 and he could be sentenced to a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. The soldier has previously faced another lawsuit for similar crimes while he was a member of the Special Air Service Regimentan elite unit of the Australian Army.

According to an Australian Federal Police investigator, the three incidents for which Roberts-Smith is charged involved Afghan citizens shot dead by the soldier himself or by a subordinate under his control, while he was present.

Specifically, the soldier would have participated in the death of two men in a place known as Whiskey 108 in 2009, in the murder of another man named Ali Jan in 2012 and in another execution of two civilians in Syahchow in that same year.

Roberts-Smith, according to the accusation, would have kicked Ali Jan in the chest, causing him to fall off a cliff and ordering another soldier to finish him off with a shot. “It will be alleged that the victims were not participating in hostilities at the time of their alleged murder in Afghanistan,” Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett detailed in a press conference.

Ross Barnett, director of investigations at the Office of the Special Investigator, has revealed that the investigations began in 2021 and have been carried out “thoroughly and professionally under difficult circumstances.”

“The challenge for researchers is that we are 9,000 km away. The challenge for researchers is that, by not being able to travel to Afghanistan, we do not have access to the crime scene. Therefore, we do not have photographs, site plans, measurements, projectile recovery or blood spatter analysis,” he stated.

Roberts-Smith has denied all allegations against him, some of which were published by the local press starting in 2018, such as that he had shot dead an unarmed teenager. These articles gave rise to Australia’s costliest defamation trial. In 2023 a judge ruled that the newspapers had proven four of the six murder accusations made.

A 2020 report found credible evidence that members of Australia’s Special Air Service (SAS) Regiment They killed dozens of unarmed prisoners during the war in Afghanistan.

The Office of the Special Investigator and the federal police have initiated 53 investigations related to war crimes committed by members of the Defense Forces in the Middle Eastern country, of which a dozen are still ongoing. Another former member of the special forces will be tried for murder next February.