Australia’s most decorated living soldier, SAS hero Ben Roberts-Smith, will remain behind bars in Sydney on war crimes charges after his lawyers did not apply for bail.
Roberts-Smith, 47, had his case heard in the online bail court on Wednesday morning, but he did not appear and his solicitor Jordan Portokalli said his client would not be making a release application.
Mr Portokalli asked for an in-person mention in the Downing Centre Local Court but was told by the bail court judge that it was not possible, and his next hearing was set for June 4, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Roberts-Smith, a Victoria Cross recipient who is revered by a broad cross-section of the Australian public for his heroism in Afghanistan, was arrested in front of his teenage daughters after arriving on a flight from Brisbane on Tuesday, and refused police bail.
He was taken into custody by officers from the Australian Federal Police and the Office of Special Investigator, an anti-war crimes taskforce, as part of an investigation launched in 2021, and faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment if found guilty.
The AFP said the charges related to the following alleged offences:
- The war crime of murder, in that he intentionally caused the death of a person, on or about 12 April, 2009, at Kakarak, Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan;
- The war crime of murder, in that he aided, abetted, counselled or procured another person to intentionally cause the death of a person, on or about 12 April, 2009, at Kakarak, Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan;
- The war crime of murder, in that he aided, abetted, counselled or procured another person to intentionally cause the death of a person, on or about 11 September, 2012, at Darwan, Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan;
- The war crime of murder, with another person, in that they intentionally caused the death of a person, on or about 20 October, 2012, in Syahchow, Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan; and,
- The war crime of murder, in that he aided, abetted, counselled or procured another person to intentionally cause the death of a person, on or about 20 October, 2012, at Syahchow, Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan.
Roberts-Smith was first accused of war crimes by by leftist journalists from corporate media giant Nine Entertainment in 2017. They were aided by Liberal MP Andrew Hastie, who gave evidence against his former SASR comrade during his defamation trial.
In 2023 he lost his lawsuit against Fairfax Media and journalists Nick McKenzie, Chris Masters and David Wroe after the Federal Court found allegations against him were “substantially true” on the balance of probabilities – a lower threshold than the “beyond reasonable doubt” required in a criminal trial. He then lost an appeal, and had an application to appeal again to the High Court rejected last year.
Earlier this year it was revealed that Nine paid $700,000 in hush money to Roberts-Smith’s mistress in a secret settlement after she threatened to sue over allegations McKenzie had broken a promise not to subpoena her to give evidence or reveal her as a source in the trial.
Roberts-Smith was awarded the Victoria Cross for his heroism in a battle in Tizak in Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province in 2010 where he risked his life to kill two Taliban machine gun teams.
Header image: Left, with his family after winning his Victoria Cross (ADF). Right, Ben Roberts-Smith being arrested (AFP).
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