Justice delayed, as they say, is justice denied. Ben Roberts-Smith has been denied justice for 20 years – and counting.
Two decades is how long it took the government to decide to even charge him for highly contested ‘war crimes’ allegations, from which his own commanders specifically exempted themselves from ever facing scrutiny for. Twenty years for DEI-obsessed Australian Federal Police commissioner Krissy Barrett to stage a publicity-seeking public arrest, even though Roberts-Smith’s lawyers had long undertaken to turn him in, should charges be laid. Somehow, too, the media just happened to be lying in wait.
And still the denial of procedural fairness continues. His passport is confiscated, even though there’s no evidence he was ever a flight risk. A quarter-million dollar bond. He can’t even leave Queensland, except to attend the kangaroo court that won’t even sit until 2029. Snitches given immunity for their own alleged crimes. Payouts to grifting Afghans with an openly declared hatred for ‘infidels’.
It gets worse. A golden rule of common law is full disclosure: the prosecution has a duty to disclose all relevant evidence in its possession to the accused. It’s taken nearly half a year for the government’s prosecutor to pony up its brief of evidence.
Ben Roberts-Smith will finally get to see the full brief of evidence detailing the war crimes he is alleged to have committed after a judge approved procedures that allow national security information to be shared with the former SAS soldier.
The Victoria Cross recipient has still not seen the full suite of allegations levelled against him after the commonwealth flagged that the disclosure of certain evidence or information could prejudice Australia’s national security.
There’s a whole lot of denial of justice that can hide under the cloak of ‘national security’.
Defence counsel for Mr Roberts-Smith have to be approved and must sign a consent “for their personal information to be accessed by the commonwealth for the purposes of assessing their suitability to access sensitive information and sensitive documents and/or highly sensitive information and highly secure documents”.
Even then, all they’ll see is a sea of black ink. Another core principle of common law justice is the right to face one’s accusers. Roberts-Smith will instead face a sea of nameless black silhouettes.
More than 500 people’s identities have been kept secret in fresh evidence filed against Ben Roberts-Smith, with the former Red Cross recipient’s legal team fighting to find out which pseudonyms relate to current soldiers, a court has been told.
The tally of secret identities now sits above 700.
Mr Roberts-Smith’s lawyer, Karen Espiner, is now pushing to find out which of the hundreds of protected identities relates to current soldiers so she can properly understand what is in the documents, arguing that non-sensitive information has no basis for a pseudonym.
“Every time those persons are referred to, their names are redacted,” Ms Espiner said.
She is not asking for the nuclear codes. She wants to know which of those numbered ghosts are still serving soldiers, so the defence can even begin to read the brief. Non-sensitive information, she argued, has no business wearing a mask.
The Crown asked for more time. Judge Susan Horan granted it. Charge certification delayed. An update on the rest of the evidence on 13 October. The truly sensitive brief, the one that actually matters, will not land until mid-November. The trial itself will not sit until 2029. Twenty years from the alleged events to a dock. Another three from Barrett’s airport pantomime to a hearing. Justice at glacial speed.
Roberts-Smith has already been smeared by a beak’s ‘I Just Reckon’. The Federal Court found against him on the balance of probabilities: a ridiculously lower bar than the criminal standard of beyond reasonable doubt that now, at last, applies. Sort of. The Office of the Special Investigator has spent five-and-a-half years and something like $300 million to set up its rickety star chamber.
Common law grew up to stop exactly this: secret accusers, delayed disclosure and the state wrapping its case in ‘national security’ until the accused cannot test it.
Roberts-Smith is still presumed innocent. You wouldn’t know it from the paperwork.
