Posted on 04/06/2026 9:27:55 PM PDT by naturalman1975
One of Australia's most decorated soldiers, Ben Roberts-Smith, has been arrested and is expected to be charged with five counts of the war crime of murder.
The Victoria Cross recipient was arrested at Sydney Airport's domestic terminal after a flight from Brisbane this morning.
The former special forces soldier's arrest comes after a mammoth defamation trial against Nine Newspapers that in 2023 ended in a court finding that on the balance of probabilities, allegations he was responsible for, or complicit in the deaths of four detainees in Afghanistan were substantially true.
There have been no findings of guilt against Mr Roberts-Smith to a criminal standard.
Mr Roberts-Smith's appeal in the Federal Court was dismissed in May last year, when the Full Court upheld the findings of the trial judge Justice Anthony Besanko.
In maintaining his innocence after the High Court refused to hear his case in September, Mr Roberts-Smith described the allegations against him in the defamation case as "egregious" and "spiteful".
Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner Krissy Barrett said it would be alleged the victims were unarmed Afghan nationals who "were not taking part in hostilities at the time of their alleged murder".
She said the charges came as a result of a "complex" investigation that was undertaken "thoroughly and meticulously" since 2021 by the AFP and Office of the Special Investigator (OSI).
"It will be alleged the victims were shot by the accused or shot by subordinate members of the ADF in the presence of, and acting on the orders of the accused," Commissioner Barrett said at a media conference in Sydney.
The AFP said the 47-year-old was expected to be charged with five counts of "war crime — murder" later today.
The maximum penalty for the offence is life imprisonment.
They include allegations he intentionally caused the death of a person in April 2009 and in another offence "aided, abetted, counselled or procured" someone to cause the death of someone on the same day in Kakarak, Uruzgan Province.
The three other charges accuse the former soldier of causing the murder of — and procuring the murder of — civilians in Darwan and Syahchow in September and October, 2012.
Commissioner Barrett said Mr Roberts-Smith was expected to face a NSW court later today.
A 'challenging' investigation
OSI director of investigations Ross Barnett said Mr Roberts-Smith's arrest was a "significant step" under "challenging circumstances" and he was "entitled to the presumption of innocence until determined otherwise".
Mr Roberts-Smith's case is one of 53 war crimes allegations the agency has investigated since 2021.
In total 39 of those have been finalised with no charges, and 10 are currently ongoing.
Mr Barnett has not ruled out further arrests as investigations continue.
"If the evidence leads to other people needing to be charged, you can be assured that will happen," he said.
This is the second time an Australian soldier has been charged with committing war crimes in Afghanistan.
In 2023 a different Defence Force soldier was charged with war crime murder and his trial is expected to take place in February next year.
"The alleged conduct related to these charges is confined to a very small section of our trusted and respected ADF which keeps our country safe," Commissioner Barrett said.
"The majority of the ADF do our country proud."
Mr Barnett said it was a "challenge" that investigators could not physically enter Afghanistan to investigate the claims against Mr Roberts-Smith.
"So the challenge for investigators is that because we can't go to that country, we don't have access to the crime scene," he said.
"We don't have photographs, site plans, measurements, the recovery of projectiles, blood spatter analysis, all of those things we would normally get at a crime scene.
"If you add to that that we don't have access to the deceased, there's no post-mortem. Therefore, there's no official cause of death."
Mr Barnett said families of the Afghan victims may not be aware of the development because it was "not safe" to make contact with them inside the Taliban-run nation.
Albanese declines to comment on Roberts-Smith's arrest Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declined to comment when asked whether the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions had sought authorisation from the federal government before Mr Roberts-Smith's arrest.
"That is a matter that it's very important that there not be political engagement in what is a matter that is now the subject of legal proceedings," he said.
"I have no intention of prejudicing a matter that clearly is a legal matter and that's before the courts and any comment would do so."
The Australian War Memorial (AWM) in 2023 added information to a display's text about Mr Roberts-Smith's Victoria Cross to reflect the Federal Court's findings earlier that year.
"The plaque at the memorial that deals with the issues around the charges will be adjusted to reflect this latest development," AWM chairman Kim Beazley told the ABC today.
It was war.
Let it go.
Does Australia have jury trials? If so, Roberts-Smith’s jury should be composed entirely of combat veterans.
In other words, a jury of his peers.
If you recall, they were trying that here during Obama’s term - prosecuting soldiers for doing their job because it’s not what the leftists want.
How did this accusation happen? Who is accusing him?
It’s about destroying the institutions of a country, in the case of the military, you pack the ranks of officers with woke trannies and then prosecute the real pipe hitters, those soldiers on the frontlines killing the enemy.
Once you accomplish that, you destroy the morale of the military, the one institution the public looks up to, especially those on the political right.
Let’s all hope that Krissy Barretts future Chinese overloards are deeply impressed by her “cpmp)ex” clairvoyant investigative talents across thousands of miles and decades.
Britain charged SAS people in 2025.
One of the things SAS and other such units do is protect VIP doucebags like asshøle politicians and senior generals.
They are expected to jump on a grenade for these people, then they stab them in the back...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15105547/Two-senior-SAS-soldiers-arrested-murder.html
‘Malicious and commercially motivated’: Ben Roberts-Smith blasts Nine (Victoria Cross recipient)
news.com.au ^ | 7th October 2019
Posted on 10/6/2019, 9:50:35 PM by naturalman1975
Australia’s most decorated soldier has accused Nine of being “malicious”, saying the company is commercially motivated to tear him down.
Ben Roberts-Smith has accused Nine of being commercially motivated and malicious when it alleged the former soldier was engaged in war crimes.
Australia’s most decorated soldier has hit back at claims he handcuffed and kicked an Afghan prisoner named Ali Jan off a cliff during a military operation in Afghanistan in 2012. The prisoner was then allegedly shot dead by another soldier.
“I want Australians to know that I absolutely deny these hurtful allegations,” Mr Roberts-Smith said in a statement provided to The Australian.
....
“What was aired by Nine’s 60 Minutes program … shows the lengths Nine will go to smear me and cast a dark cloud over my service to this nation,” Mr Roberts-Smith said.
“It was also an attempt to prejudge two official inquiries examining the alleged incident, one an Australian Federal Police criminal probe, the second a long-running inquiry by the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force into possible war crimes committed by Australian troops in Afghanistan.”
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
****
So, was Ali Jan a terrorist or not?
This was based on the claims of two other soldiers, no word on if the were there or not but probably not since they relayed what “they overheard” from others.
I understand he works for a rival media company.
He is pretty handsome, good fighter, maybe the media thinks he could be a threat to libs and wants to make sure he can’t run for office? Has there been such talk?
>> on the balance of probabilities, allegations he was responsible for, or complicit in the deaths of four detainees in Afghanistan were substantially true
“on the balance of probabilities”.
Compare with “beyond a reasonable doubt”.
Thank GOD America is not this fff-d up Aussie cesspool full of progressive shit!
Australian men should be ASHAMED OF THEMSELVES for letting Australia fall so far. What the hell happened to them? Did they take estrogen supplements and pussy out or something?
ping, like the Haditha bs here
Outrageous
Aussies can blame the British for Breaker Morant, but they’re doing this themselves.
Robert Schocroft
1h
A Question the AFP Needs to Answer
The arrest of Ben Roberts-Smith raises a serious and uncomfortable question for the Australian Federal Police which goes beyond the individual and goes to the heart of how justice is perceived in this country.
What was the urgency? Why remove a man from a domestic flight, in full view of passengers, and, most disturbingly, in front of his children? To me, that’s the part that stands out ATM. Not the legal process. Not the charges. Not even the broader controversy surrounding Roberts-Smith. It’s the way the arrest happened. The spectacle of it.
We hear all the time that no one is above the law. That’s fair. But the law should also be applied with proportionality, professionalism, and basic human decency. This was not a man trying to flee the country. This wasn’t a high-speed chase or a last-minute interception at an international terminal. It appeared to be a domestic travel situation, likely tied to the Easter period when many Australians travel between cities with their families. So again, why then and there? Why not at his home? Why not through a controlled, private process that avoids unnecessary spectacle? Because make no mistake, this was a spectacle.
Public arrests send a message. They are visible and deliberate. They signal not just to the person being detained but to everyone watching. When that visibility includes children - his children - forced to see their father taken away in an airport terminal, it crosses from law enforcement into performative art.
Now, some will argue procedure. They might say that operational decisions are based on timing, logistics, or intelligence, and that could be true. But in cases like this - high-profile, non-violent, and involving someone under scrutiny for years - the bar for justifying such a public intervention should be much higher.
Because perception matters.
Justice is not only about outcomes. It’s about process. It’s about whether the public believes the system is fair, measured, and consistent. Right now, a reasonable Australian might look at this and ask:
Was this about necessity or optics?
Was this about risk or making a statement?
The Australian Federal Police owe the public an answer. Not a bureaucratic non-response, not a statement about “operational matters,” but a clear explanation of why they chose this approach over more restrained options.
To maintain confidence in our institutions, Australians need to know that justice is being administered, not staged. Yet, I can’t help but sense something else in all of this. The behind the scenes influencing hand of a government eager for anything to divert attention and headlines from its own poor performances. A headline. A distraction. A moment. Maybe that’s unfair. There could be a sound operational explanation. But when an arrest happens in such a public and emotionally charged way, people will ask questions. Once those questions are raised, they don’t go away easily. That’s why the AFP needs to be completely transparent and straightforward. If they don’t, the suspicion won’t fade. It will grow.
-----------------------------
This MO is of course well known to all Americans who have witnessed the anti-Trump (il-)legal insurrection.
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