Australia Charges Decorated Veteran Ben Roberts-Smith With Five War Crime Murders

Australian authorities have charged the country’s most decorated living veteran, Ben Roberts-Smith, with five counts of war crime murder over the alleged killing of unarmed Afghan civilians during his deployment between 2009 and 2012.

The 47-year-old former Special Air Service Regiment corporal was arrested at Sydney Airport on Tuesday after arriving from Brisbane. Police have not formally named the accused, but multiple media outlets have identified him as Roberts-Smith, a recipient of both the Victoria Cross and the Medal of Gallantry.

According to police, the charges relate to incidents in which the victims were allegedly detained, unarmed, and under the control of Australian Defense Force personnel when they were killed. Authorities further allege that the victims were either shot directly by the accused or by subordinates acting under his direction.

Roberts-Smith is expected to appear in court on Wednesday and may apply for bail.

He becomes only the second Australian veteran to face criminal prosecution over alleged war crimes committed during the Afghanistan conflict. The first, Oliver Schulz, has pleaded not guilty to a separate charge involving the fatal shooting of an افغان man in 2012.

Under Australian law, war crime murder carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. The offense is defined as the intentional killing of noncombatants — including civilians, detainees, or wounded individuals — during armed conflict.

The criminal charges follow years of scrutiny over alleged misconduct by Australian special forces in Afghanistan. A landmark military inquiry released in 2020 found credible evidence that elite troops were responsible for the unlawful killings of 39 detainees and civilians.

Roberts-Smith had previously denied similar allegations in a high-profile defamation case against several newspapers. However, in 2023, a federal court ruled against him, finding that claims he unlawfully killed four noncombatants were substantially true on the civil standard of proof. Australia’s High Court later declined to hear his appeal.

Unlike the civil case, prosecutors in the current proceedings must prove the allegations beyond a reasonable doubt.

Officials emphasized that the charges relate to a small number of individuals and do not reflect the conduct of the broader Australian Defense Force, which deployed around 40,000 personnel to Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021.