Face of the Day

One of Australia’s most decorated soldiers, Ben Roberts-Smith, has been arrested and was 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 on Tuesday morning.

The former special forces soldier’s arrest comes after a mammoth defamation trial against Nine Newspapers which 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 Roberts-Smith to a criminal standard.

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, Roberts-Smith described the allegations against him in the defamation case as “egregious” and “spiteful”.

RNZ