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In the same week that the USA spent hundreds of millions to rescue two of their servicemen in a daring operation, Australia spent $300 million publicly humiliating our most decorated war hero. The Australian Federal Police made sure to grab maximum media attention by arresting Ben Roberts-Smith with great fanfare as he stepped off a plane at Sydney Airport. It was just the latest dire low in a years-long ritual debasement of the men who risked their lives at the behest of politicians.
Already, furious veterans are returning their medals, while the DEI-obsessed AFP commissioner will no doubt be adding yet more to the chocolate box of bling she likes to pose with. AFP commissioner Krissy Barrett, who infamously claimed the Bondi Islamic terror attack was “not motivated by religion”, is an ‘AFP First Nations Champion’ who brags about ‘implementing diversity and inclusion strategies’. Her blatherskite about ‘promoting healthy and inclusive workplace culture’, though, doesn’t extend to the mental health of the rough men with guns who do violence on her behalf. No: now it’s all ‘chuck him out, the brute!’
Australia’s most decorated soldier Ben Roberts-Smith will remain behind bars as his legal team did not formally apply for bail after he was charged with war crime offences […]
After his dramatic arrest at Sydney Airport on Tuesday, Mr Roberts-Smith – who was feted by Queen Elizabeth and awarded the nation’s highest military honour, the Victoria Cross – was refused bail after being charged with alleged murders between 2009 and 2012.
He’d have been better off parachuting into down-town Tehran.
Billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart has slammed the prosecution of Ben Roberts-Smith, urging that “his duty to our country in the hardship of war is never forgotten”, after the former soldier was charged with war crimes.
“I don’t understand how it can be justified to spend more than $300 million to try for years to bring SAS veterans, who have served our country, towards criminal proceedings, and most recently the arrest of Ben,” Mrs Rinehart said in a statement […]
Mrs Rinehart suggested the money spent on pursuing war crimes investigations would have been “far better spent strengthening Australia’s security and keeping Australians safe from terrorism, including removing terrorists and their supporters from our country”.
Proving the charges to a proper standard – convincing a jury beyond reasonable doubt, rather than relying on a single judge’s ‘I Just Reckon’, as happened in Roberts-Smith’s civil case – may well be an uphill battle for prosecutors, given the confused and contradictory statements already made by witnesses in the case. Some of whom made clear they were only doing so under extreme psychological duress: “I still don’t agree with the fact BRS is here, under extreme duress, for killing bad dudes we went over there to kill,” the witness known only as Person 24 said in a previous civil trial. “I do not want to be here. I find it extremely difficult to stomach having to give evidence against that man (Roberts-Smith) in the corner.”
Others expressed deep regret at being compelled to give evidence against a former member of the “band of brothers” and have suffered severe psychological issues since leaving the SAS.
Establishing clearly what happened on the occasions alleged will likely be near impossible.
The same alleged incident was often remembered very differently even by those on the same side in the case.
All of which will become a headache for prosecutors and a potential pathway to acquittal for Roberts-Smith.
What do prosecutors allege happened?
The first two criminal charges against Roberts-Smith relate to the alleged killing of two detainees hauled from a tunnel during a raid on a Taliban compound known as Whiskey 108 in Oruzgan province on Easter Sunday 2009 […]
During the defamation trial some witnesses backed Roberts-Smith’s claim that no one was found in the tunnel and that both the men killed at Whiskey 108 were legitimate targets – one armed with a rifle, the other a “spotter” with a radio.
Those soldiers included the only man who actually entered the tunnel, a slightly-built New Zealander known in the trial as Person 35 who had stripped off his armour and crawled into the narrow space armed only with his service pistol.
The Kiwi told the court there was no one hiding in the tunnel, though he found large amounts of weaponry, including AK 47 variants, ammunition and communication devices.
This underscores one of the most damnable aspects of this whole debacle: Australian soldiers are being asked to be plaster saints in a conflict where the line between civilian and combatant was too often hopelessly blurred. And where even their supposed local ‘comrades-in-arms’ were just as likely to murder them in their barracks.
Roberts-Smith says the Afghan he killed that day – a man with the prosthetic leg – was an armed insurgent he had encountered coming around the corner of the compound.
But at least three other men present gave three accounts that all differed from each other in important degrees. Even notes made by a journalist in 2018 have the same person giving two completely different accounts, claims that person in turn strongly rejects.
Few in the defamation case felt the pain of a friendship torn apart more acutely than the two soldiers known in court as Person 4 and Person 11.
They were the only witnesses to what occurred after Roberts-Smith allegedly kicked handcuffed shepherd Ali Jan off a cliff at Darwan in 2012.
By way of context, this alleged incident happened when Roberts-Smith and his squad were hunting for treacherous Afghan army sergeant Hekmatullah, who had recently murdered three Australian soldiers as they played cards in the Australian base.
Roberts-Smith said the cliff incident simply did not happen. Instead, he and Person 11 each recounted how they had engaged and killed a Taliban “spotter” carrying a radio after they had crossed the dry creek bed, as the team was making its way to an extraction point, to be picked up by helicopters.
Person 11 said he saw a man in the cornfields about 20m away “moving in a very suspicious manner”. He fired a burst of three or four rounds at the man with his M4 assault rifle, and realised Roberts-Smith, behind him, was also shooting at the man.
We aren’t no thin red ’eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints:
Why, single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints.
