Ben Roberts-Smith: Justice On Trial
The arrest of Australia’s most decorated living soldier for alleged war crimes has cast another dark shadow over the ADF’s already tarnished reputation.
Ben Roberts-Smith – who served in the Special Air Services Regiment and has received both the Medal for Gallantry and the Victoria Cross – was arrested at Sydney Airport and charged with five counts of the war crime of murder.
The charges include two counts of “intentionally causing the death of someone” and three counts of “aiding, abetting, counselling, procuring another person to intentionally cause the death of a person” while serving in Afghanistan.
Once a national hero, Roberts-Smith now sits behind bars at Sydney’s Silverwater jail awaiting a bail review and is only the second former or current ADF member to face war crimes charges under Australian law.
In 2023, former SAS trooper Oliver Schulz was charged with the war crime of murder for his role in the 2012 shooting of villager Dad Mohammad in an Afghan field. Schulz plead not guilty and his case goes to trial next year.
Ben Roberts-Smith’s arrest has fiercely divided Australians, some marking it as a significant display of justice and condemning Smith as a war criminal. Others, including veterans and former Prime Minister Tony Abbot, stand unreservedly by Smith and are appalled the ADF has turned on one of its own.
Undoubtedly, the timing of his arrest and the way it was conducted is highly questionable.
The alleged actions of Roberts-Smith and other SAS operators in Afghanistan have been the subject of a years-long investigation that has cost taxpayers more than $300 million. Yet, Australian military preparedness has declined, requiring a record funding boost to the 2026 defence budget to compensate for the shortfall.
The Iranian conflict and ensuing oil crisis revealed the shameful state of Australia’s dwindling defence capabilities. At a time when the ADF is unable to deploy a single warship from its shrinking fleet to adequately defend our borders, it invested hundreds of millions in investigating a handful of its most elite personnel.
The high profile arrest of an alleged war criminal in a public setting provides a convenient distraction from the deficiencies that have festered in both the ADF and the federal government, all under the guise of accountability and international justice.
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The accusations of Ben Roberts-Smith’s alleged war crimes date back to 2018 when Australian journalists Nick McKenzie, Chris Masters, and David Wroe reported Roberts-Smith was involved in the extrajudicial killings of Afghanis.
Roberts-Smith has continually denied the allegations and even sued the journalists and Fairfax Media for defamation in a civil case that he lost, compounding his troubled public perception and casting doubt over the veracity of his claims.
Additionally, lawyers for Ben Roberts-Smith have repeatedly stated that he is willing to turn himself in to authorities if requested. Then why was it necessary to humiliate him with a public arrest by the AFP in front of his daughters with a Channel Nine news team in tow? It appears as a planned manoeuvre with the intended result of diverting focus from the subject of institutional failure to personal accountability.
The SASR is considered Australia’s elite special operations unit and has a proud history of deployments in Borneo, Vietnam, Somalia, East Timor, Iraq, and Afghanistan. They are the rough men who stand ready in the night so that we may sleep safe in our beds.
Operating behind enemy lines, the SASR carry out vital reconnaissance and rescue missions as well as long-range offensive operations and ambushing enemy combatants. The SASR employs a strict code of conduct and rules of engagement, protocols designed to ensure maximum impact with minimal loss to civilian life.
But those lofty aims cannot always be achieved in the heat of battle, especially when an unscrupulous enemy is able to exploit them as a fundamental weakness. In Afghanistan, the Taliban employed a style of guerilla warfare that took advantage of established rules of engagement.
Insurgents used IEDs, civilian suicide bombers, and child decoys to lure squadrons into an ambush. It became difficult to distinguish friend from foe, adding another layer to the fog of war that permeates any armed conflict.
As the conditions of war change, soldiers are expected to adapt and follow the orders of their superiors. It’s a mindset engrained from basic training and an essential survival skill when making split-second decisions in the heat of battle.
There is an underlying sentiment that if Ben Roberts-Smith did indeed commit the crimes he is accused of, he should face punishment accordingly.
However, legal experts have raised doubts whether Ben Roberts-Smith can actually get a fair trial due to the lengthy delay in laying charges and extensive prejudicial media coverage. Witnesses will be recounting events from nearly 20 years ago and human memory is notoriously fallible, susceptible to suggestibility and distortion.
There is also the risk of a fatally biased jury pool arising from extensive media coverage of the case. Under the Constitution, Ben Roberts-Smith will almost certainly face a jury trial but in the court of public opinion he is already guilty having not been afforded the presumption of innocence that underpins our legal system.
Assuredly, the trial of Ben Roberts-Smith will be a test of our legal system and public confidence in its ability to properly render justice.
