The Icon of Courage, a Humble Man

"[The praise of political elites] doesn't sit well with me".

"[Meeting with Queen Elizabeth II as a fresh VC recipient in 2011: "It is very humbling."

"I think the most important thing to take away is I'm here representing everyone else back home, the whole ADF [Australian Defence Force] and more importantly my team who were with me on the day."

Decorated war veteran, Ben Roberts-Smith, 44, Australia 

 

"That's not to diminish their actions… but the culture is rotten and the cover-up which has flowed from that is also rotten."

"We cannot put people into harm's way repeatedly without appropriate support and oversight of what they're doing and how."

"[The Australian Defence Force has had a] cultural problem [for ] decades, [secrecy, tribalism and] misguided loyalty [have been allowed to flourish]."

"Defence has tried to argue that it's a few bad apples, or perhaps even a bad barrel here and there… but overall, the culture needs to change and change rapidly." 

James Connor, military sociologist, University of New South Wales

Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith meets with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace in 2011.(ABC News)

 

Federal Court Justice Anthony Besanko dismissed the claims by Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith that he was a victim of defamation by media. Justice Besanko ruled that news articles published in 2018 were substantially true in their revelations of a number of war crimes committed by former Special Air Service Regiment corporal Roberts-Smith, now retired from the military, and employed as a media company executive.

Roberts-Smith, who was awarded the Medal of Gallantry for his service in Afghanistan "broke the moral and legal rules of military engagement", found Justice Besanko, and in so doing disgraced Australia through his conduct. Australia has extraordinarily restrictive defamation laws, which makes the ruling a vindication for press freedom in the wake of a hard-fought trial that took over 110 court hearing days at a cost of over $22 million in legal fees.

Allegations proven to be true of Roberts-Smith, son of a former justice of the Supreme Court of Western Australia, who had joined his country's military at age 18, among other other, similar issues was that he shot a prisoner with a prosthetic leg in the back with a machine-gun at a Taliban compound code-named Whiskey 108 in Uruzgan province, in 2009. The prosthetic of the man he killed was retained by Roberts-Smith, ghoulishly as a novelty drinking vessel.

One of two unarmed Afghans that Roberts-Smith's patrol had dragged from a tunnel, a second, older man was put to death by a "newly deployed and inexperienced" soldier whom Roberts-Smith pressured and ordered to kill. Another accusation, also proven, was the killing of an unarmed, handcuffed farmer by the name of Ali Jan whom Roberts-Smith kicked from a cliff top into a riverbed at the Afghan village of Darwan in 2012. A soldier under Roberts-Smith's command was then directed to shoot Jan dead.  

Roberts-Smith was accused of involvement in six unlawful killings, two of which were not proven to the civil court standard of balance of probability, the judge found. Alleged reports of domestic violence committed by Roberts-Smith were found as well unproven and defamatory but the judge's opinion was that the unproven allegations would no more have further damaged his already destroyed reputation.

According to Roberts-Smith's lawyers "corrosive jealousy" within the SAS motivated a "poisonous campaign against him", for Roberts-Smith denied any wrong-doing on his part. Claims of defamation against The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Canberra Times' articles formed the civil case that Ben Roberts-Smith prosecuted and which the court had rejected.

Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith after he received his Victoria Cross in January 2011.(AAP: Department of Defence)