Australia’s most decorated living war veteran has lost an appeal against a civil court ruling that implicated him in war crimes while serving in Afghanistan.
Australia’s Federal Court dismissed the appeal lodged by Ben Roberts-Smith on Friday, in the latest setback for the 46-year-old’s fight to salvage a reputation tattered by reports that he took part in the murder of four unarmed Afghan prisoners.
Three federal court judges unanimously rejected his appeal of a judge’s ruling in 2023, which said Roberts-Smith was not defamed by newspaper articles published in 2018 that accused him of a range of war crimes.
In the earlier ruling, a judge had found that the accusations were substantially true to a civil standard and Roberts-Smith was responsible for four of the six unlawful deaths of noncombatants he had been accused of.
Delivering the appeal court’s verdict, Justice Nye Perram explained that the reasons for the decision are being withheld due to national security implications that the government must consider.
The marathon 110-day trial is estimated to have cost 25 million Australian dollars ($16m) in legal fees that Roberts-Smith will likely be liable to pay.
He has however said he will fight to clear his name in Australia’s High Court, his last avenue of legal appeal.
“I continue to maintain my innocence and deny these egregious spiteful allegations,” Roberts-Smith said in a statement. “We will immediately seek to challenge this judgement in the High Court of Australia.”
Tory Maguire, an executive of Nine Entertainment that published the articles Roberts-Smith claimed were untrue, welcomed the ruling as an “emphatic win”.
“Today is also a great day for investigative journalism and underscores why it remains highly valued by the Australian people,” Maguire said.
Australia deployed 39,000 troops to Afghanistan over two decades as part of United States and NATO-led operations against the Taliban and other armed groups.
Perth-born Roberts-Smith, a former SAS corporal, had won the Victoria Cross – Australia’s highest military honour – for “conspicuous gallantry” in Afghanistan while on the hunt for a senior Taliban commander.
An Australian military report released in 2020 found evidence that Australian troops unlawfully killed 39 Afghan prisoners and civilians. The report recommended 19 current and former soldiers face criminal investigation.
It’s not clear whether Roberts-Smith was one of them.
Police have been working with the Office of the Special Investigator, an Australian investigation agency established in 2021, to build cases against elite SAS and Commando Regiments troops who served in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016.
The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times said in a series of reports in 2018 that Roberts-Smith had kicked an unarmed Afghan civilian off a cliff and ordered subordinates to shoot him.
