Former Australian soldier charged with five war crime murders of Afghan civilians
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Former Australian soldier Ben Roberts-Smith has been arrested at Sydney airport and charged with five counts of war crime murder over the deaths of Afghan civilians in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012.
The Australian federal police arrested the 47-year-old after he flew from Brisbane to Sydney on Tuesday morning. He is due to appear in the bail court on Wednesday after spending the night at Silverwater prison.
The charges relate to three incidents in Afghanistan and carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
AFP commissioner Krissy Barrett said the victims were unarmed, detained, and under the control of Australian Defence Force members when they were killed.
The allegations concern the deaths of two Afghan men at a location known as Whiskey 108 in Kakarak in 2009, the death of Ali Jan in Darwan in 2012, and the deaths of two civilians at Syahchow in 2012.
Roberts-Smith, a former corporal in the Australian Special Air Service Regiment, has denied wrongdoing.
In a failed defamation case against three newspapers, a federal court previously found on the civil standard of the balance of probabilities that Roberts-Smith murdered unarmed civilians in Afghanistan.
The court found that in Darwan in 2012, Roberts-Smith kicked an Afghan man, Ali Jan, off a cliff before ordering another soldier to shoot him dead.
The court also found that during a 2009 raid at Whiskey 108, Roberts-Smith ordered a junior soldier to execute an older man, then shot and killed a younger man with a prosthetic leg after forcing him outside the compound.
The investigation began in 2021, according to the Office of the Special Investigator. Its director of investigations, Ross Barnett, said investigators faced major challenges because they could not access Afghanistan, crime scenes, or postmortem evidence.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declined to comment, saying the matter was before the courts.
