Ben Roberts-Smith

Closing submissions begin in the former SAS soldier's long-running defamation trial against three newspapers.

Roberts-Smith has consistently maintained “nobody came out of the tunnel” and said the two men killed were legitimate insurgent targets. Owens said the court had heard multiple accounts from soldiers on the ground at Whiskey 108 who gave “unchallenged evidence” that two men were pulled out of the tunnel. Owens said those subpoenaed by the newspapers to give evidence were “honest men”, and their testimony was “accurate”. He said Roberts-Smith’s witnesses, by contrast, were compromised: “Each of those witnesses had an obvious motive to lie.” The newspapers allege the two men were unlawfully killed: one, an elderly man, was allegedly murdered by an inexperienced Australian SAS soldier on the orders of his superior, Roberts-Smith, in a “blooding” incident; the second, who had a prosthetic leg, was allegedly “frog-marched” outside the compound, thrown to the ground and machine-gunned to death by Roberts-Smith. Moses told the court the defamation trial had been called “a great many things”, including the “trial of the century”, a “proxy war crimes trial” and an “attack on the freedom of the press”. Matthew Richardson SC, also appearing for Roberts-Smith, told the court the dispassionate nature of the legal proceedings “elide the fact this case is about a human being … who has suffered, who was once known as a hero, and who is now, thanks to the respondents, widely reviled as a murderer and an abuser of women”.

Closing submissions have begun in the defamation trial launched by Ben Roberts-Smith, describing a sustained media campaign to discredit an exceptional ...

“The allegation is baseless and should not have been persisted with. Presumably it was persisted with in order to damage Mr Roberts-Smith in aid of the other allegations which have been propounded in this matter,” Mr Moses said. “But is now thanks to the respondents, a man wildly reviled as a murderer and an abuser of women,” Mr Richardson said.

Elite soldiers who eventually testified against Ben Roberts-Smith in his defamation case were willing to turn a blind...

"Each of whom has a powerful motive to lie, and each of whom came and gave dishonest evidence to Your Honour." Mr Moses said it shattered his reputation and even if vindicated in what was often described as the trial of the century, it would take years for it to fully recover. "The other side of the option for Your Honour, is a group of closely associated witnesses bound by ties of strong friendship, business, and in some cases, criminal interest," Mr Owens said. While Person 24 had "no qualms" with what the Victoria Cross recipient had done, he gave evidence due to the impact of these events on his friend, Mr Owens said. "People were willing to turn a blind eye to the most despicable and egregious breaches of the laws of war," Mr Owens said. On the same mission Mr Roberts-Smith either stood by or ordered his comrade and fresh trooper Person Four to shoot the other detained prisoner, to "blood the rookie".

SAS soldiers who eventually testified against Ben Roberts-Smith were willing to turn a blind eye to alleged crimes due to a code of silence, ...

“Each of whom has a powerful motive to lie, and each of whom came and gave dishonest evidence to Your Honour.” While Person 24 had “no qualms” with what the Victoria Cross recipient had done, he gave evidence due to the impact of these events on his friend, Mr Owens said. “People were willing to turn a blind eye to the most despicable and egregious breaches of the laws of war,” Mr Owens said.

A culture of silence within Australia's Special Air Service led soldiers in Afghanistan to turn a blind eye to war crimes, the Federal Court has heard in ...

Roberts-Smith’s lawyers have said the allegation ought to have been withdrawn after Person 66 was not compelled to testify. But it is, with respect, a humanly understandable flaw in a person who has worked very hard to achieve something where there is a culture that says, ‘don’t rock the boat’.” The former SAS corporal maintains any killings happened lawfully in the heat of battle. He submitted Besanko would find there was “clearly a culture of silence within the SAS”. “People were willing to turn a blind eye to the most despicable and egregious breaches of the laws of war,” he said. Under the rules of engagement that bound the SAS, prisoners could not be killed. “There’s no doubt about the fact that the men were killed,” Owens said. The newspapers allege two Afghan men were pulled from a tunnel on that day in the compound dubbed Whiskey 108 and taken prisoner. Another former soldier, Person 56, said that either Person 4 or Person 11 disclosed after the Darwan mission that “an individual had been kicked off a cliff and ... shot”. Roberts-Smith and four of his former comrades maintained no men were found in the tunnel. On Tuesday, the newspapers’ barrister, Nicholas Owens, SC, focused on two of the media outlets’ centrepiece allegations. Person 11, a friend of Roberts-Smith, supported this account.

Nine newspapers' final attempt to defeat a mammoth defamation lawsuit, launched by venerated SAS soldier Ben Roberts-Smith, can be distilled to one single ...

The details offered up by the villagers could not be “cunningly” inserted or “manufactured” unless they were true Darwan locals and true witnesses to the raid, Mr Owens told the court. “There is no attempt (from Mr Roberts-Smith) to explain how it is that the evidence of Person 4, a soldier on this side of the world, could correspond so closely with the evidence of the three Afghan witnesses on the other side of the world.” “(The Afghans) all spoke of being in that final compound set, seeing a tall soldier wet from the waist down, seeing someone kicked off a cliff all at the exact same time, the exact same date, in the exact same location, that Person 4 described,” Mr Owens told the court.

The lawyer for media outlets being sued for defamation by Ben Roberts-Smith has handed down a final pitch in the lengthy trial.

In closing submissions, newspapers' lawyer accuses several of Roberts-Smith's witnesses of 'outright dishonesty'

But Roberts-Smith told the court the elderly man was shot and killed in action outside the courtyard by another Australian soldier whose identity he does not know. We say it’s proved a problem for his case because, in fact, the old man’s body was inside the tunnel courtyard.” The newspapers allege the elderly man was executed on Roberts-Smith’s orders inside the compound’s courtyard, near to the entrance of the tunnel. The man was a legitimate insurgent target who posed a threat to Australian soldiers and was lawfully engaged and killed, Roberts-Smith told the court. Roberts-Smith denies the killings ever happened as alleged. He denies any wrongdoing.

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A culture of silence within Australia's Special Air Service led soldiers in Afghanistan to turn a blind eye to war crimes, the Federal Court has heard in ...

Roberts-Smith’s lawyers have said the allegation ought to have been withdrawn after Person 66 was not compelled to testify. But it is, with respect, a humanly understandable flaw in a person who has worked very hard to achieve something where there is a culture that says, ‘don’t rock the boat’.” The former SAS corporal maintains any killings happened lawfully in the heat of battle. He submitted Besanko would find there was “clearly a culture of silence within the SAS”. “People were willing to turn a blind eye to the most despicable and egregious breaches of the laws of war,” he said. Under the rules of engagement that bound the SAS, prisoners could not be killed. “There’s no doubt about the fact that the men were killed,” Owens said. The newspapers allege two Afghan men were pulled from a tunnel on that day in the compound dubbed Whiskey 108 and taken prisoner. Another former soldier, Person 56, said that either Person 4 or Person 11 disclosed after the Darwan mission that “an individual had been kicked off a cliff and ... shot”. Roberts-Smith and four of his former comrades maintained no men were found in the tunnel. On Tuesday, the newspapers’ barrister, Nicholas Owens, SC, focused on two of the media outlets’ centrepiece allegations. Person 11, a friend of Roberts-Smith, supported this account.

The war veteran and some of his witnesses engaged in a “concerted effort” to give false evidence about the alleged execution of an Afghan prisoner, ...

Roberts-Smith’s lawyers have said the allegation ought to have been withdrawn after Person 66 was not compelled to testify. The former SAS corporal maintains any killings happened lawfully in the heat of battle. The newspapers allege Roberts-Smith was involved in the murder of five Afghan prisoners, including by directing an Afghan soldier working with Australian forces to order one of his subordinates to shoot an unarmed prisoner in October 2012. Under the rules of engagement that bound the SAS, prisoners could not be killed. However, he maintained the Afghan soldier was not there. Roberts-Smith has also denied giving any such direction.