Posted on 04/16/2026 6:13:11 PM PDT by naturalman1975
Ben Roberts-Smith was taking his teenage daughters on a shopping day trip to Sydney when he was arrested getting off a Qantas flight and charged with war crimes.
The Victoria Cross recipient had flown from Queensland to NSW with his 15-year-old twins and partner Sarah Matulin on the morning of April 7 and all four were holding return tickets to Brisbane.
Roberts-Smith, who will apply for bail today in Downing Centre Local Court, had treated his girls to an Easter school holidays expedition and none of the group had checked any luggage.
Federal authorities knew the 47-year-old was making the journey on Tuesday last week and could have arrested him when he returned to his home state that evening, a source close to Roberts-Smith said.
Roberts-Smith has been charged with five counts of 'war crime - murder' allegedly committed between 2009 and 2012 while he served with the Special Air Service in Afghanistan.
He believes authorities chose to arrest and prosecute him in NSW because his case would be more likely to succeed there than in Queensland.
NSW no longer runs committal hearings at which the prosecution brief is weighed by a judge to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to send a person to be tried by a jury.
Roberts-Smith's lawyers believe if their client faced a committal hearing in Queensland, where committals are still held, the evidence against him might be considered too weak for a trial to go ahead.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
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“committed between 2009 and 2012”
And I thought our courts are slow.
So what’s the story? Did he or didn’t he?
The process is the punishment.
And this assumes that a jury will eventually free this good man. But if Roberts-Smith is sent to prison, every last Australian armed services officer should resign in protest.
Nothing less would do.
He’s entitled to the presumption of innocence.
And to me, the evidence looks pretty weak at this point.
It was strong enough in a civil court case where decisions are made on the basis of ‘balance of probabilities’.
But a criminal case requires ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’.
I don’t know if the laws in Australia are the same as in the USA.
I’m Australian.
On this, the laws are similar.
In a criminal case, a person must be found guilty beyond all reasonable doubt.
In a civil case, decisions are made based on a lower standard of ‘balance of probabilities’.
All testimonial evidence and no hard/physical evidence?
And after all these years, it sounds like someone with an ax to grind.
So this is the little pecker politicians determined to smear anyone who might be an inspiration to Australians in the future. You must conform, or we will jail you. Is it Australia or China?
My impression is it’s not so much politicians as particular people in the public service, and perhaps, in the police.
But that’s my feeling more than anything else.
People who think their personal ‘morality’ allows them to do whatever they like, and who dislike anything traditional or conservative.
Burden of proof in civil court less
Similar to here
Australia still has jury trials? In Canada, the offense must be punishable by 5 or more years in prison before the Canuck courts will allow a jury to hear a criminal case. Another reason to stay our of Canada.
Yes. The rules differ from state to state, but jury trials exist on various terms across Australia.
In this case, the offences are Commonwealth one (that is, the prosecution will be by a national level court rather than a state level one) and nearly all indictable offences brought before a Commonwealth court are tried by jury.
There is actually some concern in this case that so many people are convinced of either BRS guilt or innocence, by years of media coverage, that convening a jury might be difficult - that it might be better if a Judge only trial was held. But at this point, that does not look like an option.
Yes. They can’t trust the government that sends them to war to break things and kill people. So let the 8-up politicians and police do it themselves.
I lived in Australia for six years. They are way ahead of the curve with socialism.
The article says nothing about the circumstances of these so-called murders.
Its bizarre the state trains up a man to be the best possible killer he can be, sends him to war and drops him into remote villages - and then accuses him 15 years later of being a killer
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