Ben Roberts-Smith

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Ben Roberts-Smith
Roberts-Smith in 2015
Born (1978-11-01) 1 November 1978 (age 45)
Perth, Western Australia
AllegianceAustralia
Service/branchAustralian Army (1996–2013)
Australian Army Reserve (2013–2015)
Years of service1996–2015
RankCorporal
Unit3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (1997–2003)
Special Air Service Regiment (2003–2013)
Battles/warsInternational Force East Timor
War in Afghanistan
Iraq War
AwardsVictoria Cross for Australia
Medal for Gallantry
Commendation for Distinguished Service
Spouse(s)
  • Emma Groom
    ​
    ​
    (m. 2003; div. 2020)​
Relations
Other workGeneral manager Seven Queensland (2015-2023)

Benjamin Roberts-Smith VC, MG (born 1 November 1978) is a former Australian Army soldier who was found in a civil defamation trial to have committed war crimes in Afghanistan.[1][2][3][4][5] Described as Australia's most decorated soldier,[6] Roberts-Smith was awarded the Medal for Gallantry (MG) in 2006, the Victoria Cross for Australia (VC) in 2011, and a Commendation for Distinguished Service in 2012.

Roberts-Smith left the full-time army in 2013 and studied business at the University of Queensland. In 2015, he was appointed deputy general manager of the regional television network Seven Queensland. He was subsequently promoted to general manager of the regional network and of metropolitan station Seven Brisbane.

In 2017, Roberts-Smith's actions in Afghanistan came under scrutiny in light of an independent war crimes inquiry into "questions of unlawful conduct concerning (Australia's) Special Operations Task Group in Afghanistan".[7]: 5  In November 2018, the Australian Federal Police launched an investigation into Roberts-Smith over allegations he committed war crimes in Afghanistan.[8] With assistance from a legal team hired by Seven Network owner Kerry Stokes, Roberts-Smith commenced defamation proceedings in August 2018 against Nine Entertainment publications The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, and against The Canberra Times, and also named each of the three journalists involved in reporting acts of bullying and war crimes committed by him.[9] The civil trial commenced in June 2021 in the Federal Court in Sydney.[10]

In June 2023, Judge Anthony Besanko dismissed Roberts-Smith's defamation case against the three publications, ruling that it was proven, based on the balance of probabilities, that Roberts-Smith murdered three Afghan men and criminally violated rules of military engagement.[11]

Early life and family

Roberts-Smith was born on 1 November 1978 in Perth, Western Australia. He is the elder son of Sue and Len Roberts-Smith, a former justice of the Supreme Court of Western Australia. He graduated from Hale School in 1995.[12] His brother, Sam, is an opera singer.[13]

Military career

Roberts-Smith in 2011

Roberts-Smith joined the Australian Army in 1996 at age 18. After completing basic training at Blamey Barracks in Kapooka, New South Wales, he underwent initial employment training at the School of Infantry at Lone Pine Barracks in Singleton, New South Wales. From there, Roberts-Smith was posted to the 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (3 RAR) in Holsworthy, New South Wales. Initially part of a rifle company, he subsequently became a section leader in the Direct Fire Support Weapons Platoon.[14] With 3 RAR, Roberts-Smith was deployed to East Timor twice, the first time as part of the International Force East Timor in 1999.[14]

After completing the Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) selection course in 2003, and the SASR reinforcement cycle, Roberts-Smith was initially posted to 3 Squadron at Campbell Barracks (Western Australia). He took part in operations off Fiji in 2004, and was part of personal security detachments in Iraq throughout 2005 and 2006. Roberts-Smith was deployed to Afghanistan on six occasions; the first two were in 2006 and 2007. After completing junior leadership training in 2009, he was posted to 2 Squadron as a patrol 2IC, and later as a patrol commander. Roberts-Smith was a member of training and assistance teams throughout Southeast Asia. He returned to Afghanistan in 2009, 2010 and 2012.[14]

In 2011, Roberts-Smith noted that he—and the ADF—expected him to be able to continue to fight as a frontline patrol commander following the receipt of the Victoria Cross. He said that "[O]nce you reach patrol commander, that is the pinnacle for an SAS operator. You are now the man."[15] He left the full-time army in 2013 at age 35 with the rank of corporal, and served part-time with the Army Reserve until 2015.

Several serving members of the SASR spoke during Roberts-Smith's defamation trial regarding bullying and threats made by Roberts-Smith during his service both within Australia and Afghanistan. "Person 1", a serving SASR member, alleged that Roberts-Smith had stated to him he would "put a bullet in the back of his head" if he didn't improve his performance. Following this, Person 1 was advised by other members to report Roberts-Smith's threat which he did, leading to Roberts-Smith threatening him again, stating "If you’re going to make accusations, cunt, you’d better have some fucking proof."  Reports of Roberts-Smith's bullying were also reiterated by Person 43 and Person 10, other serving members of the SASR.[16][17]

Military decorations

Medal for Gallantry and Victoria Cross for Australia

Medals on display at the Australian War Memorial. (Note that this display does not include his full entitlement.)

In 2006, Roberts-Smith was awarded the Medal for Gallantry for his operations as a patrol scout and sniper in Afghanistan.[18]

He was presented with the VC by the Governor-General of Australia, Quentin Bryce, at a ceremony held at Campbell Barracks in Perth on 23 January 2011.[19][20]

The decision to award Roberts-Smith's VC was raised during defamation proceedings where it was revealed that several former and serving members of the SAS had questioned the decision to award the VC to Roberts-Smith.[21][22][23]

Roberts-Smith being presented with the Victoria Cross for Australia during his investiture ceremony

Commendation for Distinguished Service

On 26 January 2014, Roberts-Smith was awarded the Commendation for Distinguished Service as part of the 2014 Australia Day Honours.[24] The award arose from a 2012 tour of Afghanistan, in which Roberts-Smith "distinguished himself as an outstanding junior leader on more than 50 high risk" operations.[25]

A 2014 painting of Roberts-Smith, Pistol Grip by Michael Zavros, hangs in the Australian War Memorial which commissioned it.[26] The National Portrait Gallery (Australia) commissioned a photo by Julian Kingma of Roberts-Smith in 2018.[27] The uniform he wore in Afghanistan is also displayed in the War Memorial.[6]

Allegations of war crimes

Further information: War crimes in Afghanistan by the Australian Defence Force

In October 2017, actions involving Roberts-Smith came under question again. One notable controversy concerned the killing of an alleged Taliban spotter during the 2006 battle of Chora Pass. According to the journalist Chris Masters, two members of the patrol had witnessed a lone Afghan teenager approaching the patrol observation post, leaving shortly thereafter. Although the two operators had decided it was not necessary to engage the Afghan, Roberts-Smith and patrol 2IC Matthew Locke arrived on-scene and the pair "decided to hunt down and shoot dead the two 'enemy' after concluding they had spotted the patrol".[28]

The patrol report had identified only a single Afghan unarmed "spotter", but Roberts-Smith later said that two armed insurgents had approached the position in an oral account provided to the Australian War Memorial. When the inconsistency was raised, Roberts-Smith claimed to have remembered incorrectly.[29]

Following the publication of No Front Line in October 2017, Fairfax Media's Nick McKenzie and the ABC's Dan Oakes covered the story—linking the case to an ongoing Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force inquiry into criminal misconduct on the battlefield by Australian special forces. Responding to the coverage in an interview with The Australian, Roberts-Smith described the scrutiny as "un-Australian". Oakes wrote "It's not 'un-Australian' to investigate the actions of special forces in Afghanistan".[30]

In June 2018, a joint ABC–Fairfax investigation detailed an assault on the village of Darwan in September 2012 during which a handcuffed man was allegedly kicked off a cliff by an Australian special forces soldier nicknamed "Leonidas" after the famed Spartan king.[31][32][33] On 6 July 2018, Fairfax Media reported that Roberts-Smith was "one of a small number of soldiers subject to investigation by an inquiry looking into the actions of Australian special forces soldiers in Afghanistan".[34] In August 2018, Fairfax Media also reported allegations by several soldiers of being bullied by Roberts-Smith, as well as a female companion's claim that she was subjected to an act of domestic violence in Australia. Roberts-Smith has denied these allegations.[35]

Investigations into allegations

In November 2018 the Australian Federal Police announced that they "received a referral to investigate allegations of war crimes committed by Australian soldiers during the Afghanistan conflict".[8] The Federal Court of Australia declared in September 2020 that no charges against Roberts-Smith had been laid.[36] In April 2021, the AFP confirmed it was also conducting a probe into allegations that Roberts-Smith had destroyed or buried evidence directly related to the ongoing investigation.[37]

Defamation suit

In response to this series of articles, in January 2019 Roberts-Smith commenced defamation proceedings in the Federal Court against Fairfax Media (a subsidiary of Nine Entertainment) and two journalists, Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters, and a former journalist, David Wroe. In its truth defence, Fairfax defended its reporting as "substantially true", detailing a series of six unlawful killings alleged to have been carried out by Roberts-Smith in Afghanistan, including those in Darwan.[38]

Kerry Stokes' private investment company Australian Capital Equity (ACE) extended Roberts-Smith a line of credit, against which he drew $1.9 million.[39] Stokes and another director of ACE are also on the board of the Australian War Memorial (AWM). Calls have been made for Stokes, as AWM chairman, to stand down over his public and private support for soldiers accused of war crimes in Afghanistan.[40]

In August 2020, it was reported that legal experts had raised concerns about a personal relationship between Roberts-Smith and his defamation lawyer, saying it could constitute unprofessional conduct.[41] News Corp Australia published a photo of Roberts-Smith holding hands with the woman, who they reported was visiting him in his new apartment in Brisbane.[39] The woman conceded that it was "unwise to spend time with him socially".[42]

In the Federal Court, the Fairfax/Nine Entertainment lawyer Sandy Dawson claimed that Roberts-Smith and his wife had given inconsistent accounts about the status of their relationship during previous years.[43]

On 1 September 2020, Dawson told the Federal Court that the Australian Federal Police had information, including an eyewitness, that allegedly implicated Roberts-Smith in Afghanistan war crimes.[44] The defamation trial, expected to last for 10 weeks, commenced in June 2021 in Sydney.[10]

The Federal Court established an online file in view of the public interest where documents were placed when considered publicly accessible.[45]

In April 2021, The Age published an article alleging that Roberts-Smith had attempted to cover up the alleged crimes by hiding incriminating images on a USB drive buried in his back yard, which has since been obtained by the Australian Federal Police.[46]

A colleague of Roberts-Smith, referred to as Person 16 (identity legally protected as part of proceedings), told the court in 2022 that Roberts-Smith had shot dead an Afghan teenage prisoner, and bragged about it.[47]

Fairfax Media’s defence against Roberts-Smith’s suit ended in early April 2022 after calling witnesses for 11 weeks.[48]

Judgment

On 1 June 2023, Justice Anthony Besanko dismissed the defamation case brought by Roberts-Smith, finding that the newspapers on trial, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Canberra Times, had established substantial or contextual truth of many of their allegations, including allegations that Roberts-Smith "broke the moral and legal rules of military engagement and is therefore a criminal”, and “disgraced his country Australia and the Australian army."[49][50] As a defamation suit is a civil proceeding, Besanko considered the evidence using the civil standard of proof on the “balance of probabilities” and not the higher standard of proof "beyond reasonable doubt" as used in criminal proceedings.[49][51]

Besanko found that three murder allegations against Roberts-Smith had been proven.[11] Besanko found that it was substantially true that during the Darwan mission in 2012, Roberts-Smith "murdered an unarmed and defenceless Afghan civilian, by kicking him off a cliff and procuring the soldiers under his command to shoot him"; and that during the Whiskey 108 mission in 2009, Roberts-Smith committed two murders, one murder "by pressuring a newly deployed and inexperienced SASR soldier to execute an elderly, unarmed Afghan in order to 'blood the rookie'", and the other murder Roberts-Smith committed "by machine gunning a man with a prosthetic leg"; Roberts-Smith later asked other soldiers to drink using the prosthetic leg.[11][52][53] It was also ruled that two allegations of murder at Syahchow and Fasil in 2012 were not proven.[11][50]

Besanko separately found that it was proven that Roberts-Smith in 2010 physically attacked an unarmed Afghan man until two patrol commanders ordered him to stop; then, in 2012, Roberts-Smith assaulted a second unarmed Afghan man and authorised the assault of a third unarmed Afghan man who was being held in custody and did not pose a threat.[54] Besanko also found that allegations of Roberts-Smith engaging in a "campaign of bullying" and threatening violence against an Australian soldier had been proven.[11][54] Meanwhile, it was ruled that allegations that Roberts-Smith committed domestic violence and threatened to report another soldier to the International Criminal Court had not been proven, but did not further harm Roberts-Smith’s reputation given the other substantially true allegations, thus establishing contextual truth.[50]

Judge Besanko also stated that Roberts-Smith was not a reliable witness due to having an obvious motive to lie. Besanko also stated that he believed that Roberts-Smith had threatened a soldier that gave testimony against him..[55]

Business career

Roberts-Smith in 2012

In 2013, Roberts-Smith launched his own consultancy, RS Group Australia, where he advised numerous national clients across a variety of sectors in relation to corporate culture, strategic restructuring and change management.[56] In October 2013, Roberts-Smith announced that he was leaving the full-time Army.[57] The University of Queensland (UQ) offered him a scholarship to study a Master of Business Administration (MBA), with a view to UQ setting up a program to support other elite SAS soldiers transitioning to a corporate career. When Roberts-Smith graduated in December 2016, becoming Australia's first enlisted Victoria Cross recipient to complete a degree after receiving the honour, he said "I joined the army at 18 so I hadn't gone to university for a Bachelor degree and I didn't have the base level of business knowledge because there were many things I just hadn't been exposed to."[58][59][60]

In April 2015 (twenty months prior to graduation), Roberts-Smith was appointed deputy general manager (GM) of regional television network Seven Queensland by Seven Network GM Neil Mooney, following leadership seminars for the station. Two months later, Roberts-Smith was promoted to GM Seven Queensland.[61][62] In April 2016, the role of general manager of Seven Brisbane was added to his responsibilities following the resignation of former Queensland cricketer and business executive Max Walters.[63][64]

During his role at Seven Queensland, Roberts-Smith was recorded expressing disdain for the business, dislike of fellow Seven executives and incredulity that he was still running Seven Queensland despite being at the center of a war crimes scandal. He also expressed that he felt indebted to media mogul and Seven owner Kerry Stokes for financing his legal actions.[65] It was alleged in February 2022 during defamation proceedings that Roberts-Smith had employed a private investigator, John McLeod, to pose as a barman during a Seven Queensland work event in order to listen to staffers at the event and discern their opinions on Roberts-Smith.[66]

In April 2021, Roberts-Smith temporarily stepped down from his roles at Seven Queensland to focus on his defamation action against Nine Entertainment.[67] He then resigned from the role following the outcome of his defamation case in June 2023.[68]

From 2014 to 2017, Roberts-Smith was chair of the National Australia Day Council, an Australian Government-owned social enterprise.[69] In popular culture, he recorded "Lest We Forget" in 2015 with country music singer Lee Kernaghan for the album Spirit of the Anzacs.

Personal life

Roberts-Smith met Emma Groom in 1998 at Holsworthy Barracks, Sydney. She came from a military family. On 6 December 2003, the couple married at the University of Western Australia.[70] In December 2020, their divorce was finalised.[71][72][73] Their twin daughters were born in 2010. Roberts-Smith was named 2013 Australian Father of the Year by The Shepherd Centre, a not-for-profit charitable organisation.[74][75] On retirement from the army in 2015, he moved to Queensland with his then wife and daughters.[76]

In 2017–2018, Roberts-Smith had a 6-month affair with "Person 17" (identity legally protected in current court proceedings). During this period, Person 17 became pregnant. Roberts-Smith hired a private investigator to monitor Person 17 and confirm her attendance at an abortion clinic. Person 17 has accused Roberts-Smith of punching her in the face after a dinner at Parliament House in 2018. Roberts-Smith denies ever striking her.[77] Person 17 also accused Roberts-Smith of coaching her on how to explain a black eye resulting from the alleged assault.[78]

In January 2022, Roberts-Smith was ordered to pay the legal costs of his ex-wife after unsuccessfully trying to sue her in the Federal Court over allegations she accessed confidential emails.[79]

References

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  78. ^ Cooper, Adam (22 November 2018). "Woman says war hero Ben Roberts-Smith told her how to explain black eye". The Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on 8 November 2020. Retrieved 15 February 2022.
  79. ^ "Ben Roberts-Smith loses case against ex-wife, court orders he pay costs". ABC News. 21 January 2022. Archived from the original on 24 January 2022. Retrieved 25 January 2022.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ben_Roberts-Smith&oldid=1158661882"