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Decorated Australian vet loses big defamation case

By the way, 60 Minutes is not shy of calling him a murderer and war criminal, criminal proceedings notwithstanding.
 
I have also learnt, to my amazement, that over 26,000 Australian troops served in Afghanistan. A pointless war.
 
Norman Alexander said:
In principle, I agree. But then the RAF and USAAF area-bombed cities for years during WW2, killing hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians. The fire-bombing and atomic strikes on Japan did the same. So were the air-crews who dropped those bombs war-criminals as a result? They are revered as brave airmen...

Again, I'm not defending Roberts-Smith. He is not a shining knight by any means. But pursuing any war-crimes accusations might lead down dark alleys many people will find abhorrent and involving other "national treasures".

Absolutely.
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Yes. For example, with the nukes there was one reason and one reason alone they were dropped, and it wasn't to get Japan to surrender. It was to tell Stalin "we got a weapon you can't match".
 
As has been rightly pointed out, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are fully deserving of a Nuremberg trial. All the way up. And would have been, too, had the Axis won, or had the Nazis managed a Hiroshima on London before getting wiped out.

Which whataboutism does not exonerate, or even explain, this Australian lowlife. Hiroshima followed the full chain of command. This psycho murderer did not.


ETA:
Actually, Norman Alexander does make a valid point. War is barbaric, uncivilized, inhuman. Unfortunately we cannot do away with this barbarity, not in the real world as opposed to the ideal. But making of killing people a profession, earning money by either directly killing people, or else directly enabling that, is an ignoble game, that may well damage otherwise sane psyches. To that extent, while obviously not every soldier is a lunatic murderer, but every soldier has been sorely tested and pushed towards it.

In a good sane world , no one would have to kill others in order to bring food to the table. But we do not live in a good sane world. To that extent, perhaps this psycho murderer is a victim of his monstrous profession. (Perhaps. Because maybe he's a psycho who found an outlet for his sadism in his monstrous profession. But the other is a possibility too.)


ETAA: I suppose when this guy is tried, his legal team may try that stunt. Claim PTSD, or some such. Maybe only cynically. But who knows, maybe rightly?
 
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The full judgement has been released.

It's not good.

The judge in Ben Roberts-Smith’s defamation case has found Ben Roberts-Smith, and four of the witnesses he called were “not honest and reliable” in their evidence about two alleged murders at a compound called Whiskey 108 in the village of Kakarak in 2009.

The mission to Whiskey 108 was a critical allegation against Roberts-Smith.

Two men were found hiding in a secret tunnel inside the bombed-out Whiskey 108 compound: one an elderly man, the other a younger man with a prosthetic leg. The men allegedly came out of the tunnel unarmed and surrendered.

The judge has found that on the balance of probabilities the newspapers in their defence of the defamation claim have proven that Roberts-Smith ordered a junior soldier on his patrol to execute the old man, before manhandling the man with the prosthetic leg outside the compound, where he threw him to the ground and fired his Para Minimi machine gun into his prone body.

The man’s leg was later souvenired by another soldier and used by Australian SAS troops as a macabre celebratory drinking vessel at their on-base bar, the Fat Ladies’ Arms.

Roberts-Smith gave evidence to the court about the mission, and called four other soldier witnesses to support his evidence. The judge rejected their evidence finding.

The judge was scathing about BRS’s evidence in totality:

I have difficulty accepting the applicant’s [Robert-Smith’s] evidence on any disputed issue.​
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[source]

Ben Roberts-Smith lied about burying USB’s containing sensitive, classified defence material in his backyard, the judge of his defamation case has found.

In his full judgment released on Monday, Justice Anthony Besanko said Roberts-Smith knew the documents were relevant to the case and kept them hidden:

I do not accept the applicant’s case that the failure to discover the USBs was due to inadvertence. The applicant lied about not burying the USBs in the backyard of the matrimonial home. He must have known they were relevant. He had sworn three affidavits of discovery and each time has not discovered them. I find that he decided not to discover them.​

The defamation trial heard Roberts-Smith’s ex-wife and a family friend dug up six USB storage sticks, buried in a child’s lunchbox in the Roberts-Smiths’s family back yard, before handing the classified files to police.

Included on the USBs was classified information including operational reports from SAS missions in southern Afghanistan, drone footage of military operations and classified photographs.
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[source]
 
He lied in sworn discovery affidavits, start with prosecuting him for perjury.
 
Again, to be clear, I put forward the "position statement" above that some SAS members get brutalised by their training and engagement in action such that they lose all sense of decency and cross the boundaries of war crimes.

However with the issue of deliberately withholding classified military information he had purloined, and lied to the authorities multiple times about concealing that information, then that is pretty clear-cut. He and Donald Trump both have that in common: That is approaching treason. He can suffer the consequences, and I expect they will be pretty dire.
 
smartcooky said:
Legal nitpick: No, he isn't.
In a lawsuit, no-one is found guilty or innocent, they are either found liable or not liable, and no-one goes to prison. The only way he can be legally labelled a war criminal and murderer is if he is convicted of these charges in a criminal court.


Note: I have no dog in this fight.
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What is he going to do? Sue for defamation?

Just as OJ Simpson is a murderer.
 
Norman Alexander said:
Again, to be clear, I put forward the "position statement" above that some SAS members get brutalised by their training and engagement in action such that they lose all sense of decency and cross the boundaries of war crimes.

However with the issue of deliberately withholding classified military information he had purloined, and lied to the authorities multiple times about concealing that information, then that is pretty clear-cut. He and Donald Trump both have that in common: That is approaching treason. He can suffer the consequences, and I expect they will be pretty dire.
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The other thing that the full judgement showed is that BRS was willing to, and tried to, throw everyone close to him under the bus. His wife, his mistress, his comrades. He is beyond contempt.
 
arthwollipot said:
The full judgement has been released.

It's not good.



[source]



[source]
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That's very cool.

I hope they'll prosecute him soon now. (I'd have loved if if they could've handed him over to the Afghan families, for some medeival justice, Islamic style, lopping off arms and legs and poking out eyes and whatnot ---- but of course, no one really wants that, not even me. But they should prosecute him, and make an example of him, and give him the harshest punishment possible.)

this is a win for journalism, absolutely. kudos to those guys.
 
Norman Alexander said:
Again, to be clear, I put forward the "position statement" above that some SAS members get brutalised by their training and engagement in action such that they lose all sense of decency and cross the boundaries of war crimes...
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That does make sense, actually.

Not just your SAS, but I'd say the principle applies to everyone that's in the business of killing people. No one can possibly kill large numbers of other human beings, and come away completely unaffected --- not unless there's been something wrong with them all along. (Which is not to suggest that all veterans are potential killers. Exactly the opposite actually. Far greater the credit, far greater the heroism, in having gone through that hell, of having to kill other human beings, and then emerged from that ordeal with your morals and your sense of right and wrong intact. Which is what most, almost all, do --- bar just a few exceptions, like this guy here.)

But be that as it may, I actually agree, coming off mentally impaired from having fought and killed, I'm sure that's a thing. More for some kinds of engagement, and more for some kinds of personalities, and less so for others, but still, I guess the principle of it would apply to most all that have seen active combat and personally killed other human beings. (Not a mental health professional, I'm just thinking aloud, is all!) I don't know, it might even explain this here guy going psycho over at Afghanistan. It actually might offer him a way out, and rightly so. (Or, of course, not. Maybe he was a psycho all along. I'm sure all of that will be evaluated by experts when this guy's tried for his crimes in a criminal court.)
 
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We had a whole thread about the Brereton Report a few years back. I predicted then that there would be some serious consequences.
 
Norman Alexander said:
The Brereton Report goes back to WW2 and Vietnam.

https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.c...g-of-historical-australian-war-crimes-part-2/
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arthwollipot said:
We had a whole thread about the Brereton Report a few years back. I predicted then that there would be some serious consequences.
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Here is the thread https://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=348006.
The report only investigated what happened in Afghanistan between 2005 to 2016. The report was released in 2020. There have not yet been any prosecutions.

The report itself is here https://www.defence.gov.au/about/reviews-inquiries/afghanistan-inquiry/resources

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brereton_Report

I think society is changing to make the release of this sort of thing possible. The link above suggests that war crimes also happened in previous wars and were never admitted.
 
Ben Roberts-Smith revealed to be soldier alleged in Brereton inquiry to have directed the killing of an elderly imam in Afghanistan

Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith directed one of his SAS comrades to kill an elderly man who was dragged from a mosque in Afghanistan, according to allegations examined by the Brereton inquiry into alleged war crimes.

ABC Investigations can reveal the disgraced war hero's alleged involvement in the killing, which sparked a diplomatic row for Australia.

The Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force Afghanistan inquiry, led by Army Reserve Major General and NSW Court of Appeal Judge Paul Brereton, recommended the incident be referred to war crimes investigators for further review.
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There's war, and there's war crimes. Scumbag.
 
rjh01 said:
Has there been any other Australians prosecuted for war crimes? If not why not?
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There's Oliver Schulz who was arrested back in March. The allegation is that he killed an Afghan civilian in a field in 2012. Now, I use the word "allegation" when we know he did it because there's footage of it that was broadcast on Four Corners. There's a screenshot of it in this article about an unknown SAS soldier who has been charged with war crimes.

If you hadn't noticed, it's the same guy. I just wanted to point out the absurdity of a suppression order being granted after the man was named a week earlier. The leading image is the same picture for both articles, only that his face is blurred in the second.

I don't know why they haven't charged more with war crimes. Part of me thinks that they can't be bothered, and probably wouldn't have had documents about war crimes not been leaked.

There are people out there who seem quite blatant about what they've done or claimed to have done. Friendlyjordies made a video that Australians can't watch now about a guy called "scojo" who has a podcast where he talks about things that happened in Afghanistan. Like bringing walkie-talkies along on patrol so they can plant them on people they shot so they could claim they were Taliban. I feel that if Australia actually cared people like this guy wouldn't be so willing to create a public podcast where he admits to doing things like that.
 
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