Ben Roberts-Smith ‘traumatised’ by allegations he murdered unarmed civilians, court hears
Ben Roberts-Smith has told a court that public allegations he murdered unarmed civilians in Afghanistan and hit a woman during an argument in Australia, left him contemplating suicide: “I started to think that my life was over.”
Fighting back tears in the witness box as he concluded his evidence-inchief Wednesday morning, the accused soldier said that since a series of newspaper articles in 2018 alleged he was a war criminal, “I’ve had moments in my life in the last three years that I just didn’t think it was worth it.”
“I have so much respect for the Victoria Cross and what it stands for, [and] for the Australian defence force. I love my family, I love my children. That keeps me going to set the record straight. That’s why I’m here.”
The Victoria Cross recipient is expected to begin what is likely to be several days of cross-examination Thursday.
An emotional Roberts-Smith said his life had been ruined by the allegations made against him, published in the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Canberra Times in 2018.
“I feel traumatised by it because I was sent to Afghanistan at the government’s behest to be part of the Australian military. I did everything I was supposed to do and I followed the rules.
“I saw things in Afghanistan and did things in Afghanistan – like having to engage adolescents – that I’m not proud of. And I live with that.”
Earlier in his evidence, RobertsSmith told the court that in 2010, during the action in Tizak that earned him his Victoria Cross, he was forced to singlehandedly storm two machine gun posts to save his life and the lives of his comrades. He told the court the second machine-gunner he killed “was, at best, 15 years old”.
He said the conflict in Afghanistan had been deeply traumatising, an anguish compounded by stories he said were “demonstrably false”.
“It’s something that just crushes me. Crushes my soul.”
The court heard further evidence about Roberts-Smith’s reaction to the newspaper articles, first published in June 2018, that alleged a soldier – given the pseudonym Leonidas – committed war crimes, including kicking an unarmed, handcuffed Afghan civilian off a cliff and ordering him shot.
Roberts-Smith said, despite the pseudonym, the article clearly identified him because it identified the soldier’s “impeccable connections up the chain of command” in the military – taken to be Roberts-Smith’s VC – his Spartan-inspired tattoos, and his height.
The soldier asked a friend of his wife to buy two “burner” phones to communicate with other former members of the SAS because he feared his phone was being monitored, he has told a court, saying he wanted to talk to comrades in a way “that wasn’t going to be compromised”.
He denied to the court he used the phones to communicate about the ongoing investigation by the inspector general of the ADF into the war crimes allegations.
Roberts-Smith said he was anonymously mailed USB drives containing photographs and operational reports from Afghanistan. He does not know where the USBs came from.
He said the USBs were never – as reported – buried in the back yard of his family home, but were left in a drawer of his desk. He said his estranged wife had access to the USBs “for many months”. The USBs contained pictures of SAS soldiers drinking in the unauthorised “Fat Ladies Arms” at the Australian’s Tarin Kowt base – including images of soldiers drinking from a prosthetic leg taken from an Afghan man shot by Roberts-Smith.
Roberts-Smith said he threw away the USBs after consolidating them on to his laptop computer. He told the court he sent all of the information from them to his lawyers and then wiped his laptop, because he was trading it in. The court earlier heard that Roberts-Smith erased the laptop’s hard drive despite having been told by lawyers, five days prior, not to destroy any evidence.
Roberts-Smith said after the articles were published he received several phone calls of support, including from then head of the Australian War Memorial Brendan Nelson, Channel Seven chairman Kerry Stokes, and former AFP commissioner Mick Keelty.
He said after the publication of the articles, his entire “family life became untenable”, but that he was most concerned for his two young daughters.
“I was worried about my children, physically and emotionally, what people might say to them, what people might do to them.
“Other children would often reference things in the paper to my children, or things they’d heard from their parents. Negative things about me having done the wrong thing, or bad things, that I’m in trouble, things you would typically get from eight-, nine-, 10-year-olds.”
Through tears, Roberts-Smith said their treatment made him feel, “like I couldn’t protect my kids”.
Roberts-Smith is suing the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Canberra
Times for defamation over a series of reports published in 2018 that he alleges are defamatory because they portray him as someone who “broke the moral and legal rules of military engagement” and committed war crimes including murder.
The 42-year-old has consistently denied the allegations, saying they are “false”, “baseless” and “completely without any foundation in truth”. The newspapers are defending their reporting as true.
• Crisis support services can be reached 24 hours a day: Lifeline 13 11 14; Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467; Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800; MensLine Australia 1300 78 99 78; Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636