The court is also set to hear from Roberts-Smith’s estranged wife, and from Afghan civilians whose family members were killed in special forces raids.
#SPEC OPS AFGHANISTAN TRIAL#
Photograph: Getty ImagesĪn eight-week trial amid ferocious public attention is expected to see his former comrades subpoenaed to give evidence about what they saw and did. He strenuously denies all allegations and has previously rejected them as malicious and deeply troubling.įormer special forces soldier Ben Roberts-Smith. Roberts-Smith, a former SAS corporal, is suing the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, and the Canberra Times over a series of 2018 articles he claims defamed him because they portrayed him as committing war crimes while on deployment in Afghanistan. Those allegations, of war crimes reportedly committed by Australians in Afghanistan, face a very public reckoning this month, when a defamation action brought by the Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith begins. Justice Paul Brereton, the defence force inspector general, argued similarly, writing of the country’s longest war: “Most of Australia’s coalition partners in Afghanistan have had to deal with allegations of war crimes.” “These things don’t happen in isolation,” she told Guardian Australia. She would conduct hundreds of hours of interviews over a period of two years with serving and former defence force members including the one above. As the post-9/11 Afghanistan conflict dragged deep into its second decade, with persistent rumours alleging impropriety, brutality, and even possible war crimes swirling among Australia’s tight-knit defence community, Dr Samantha Crompvoets, a civilian sociologist, was commissioned to investigate alleged cultural failings within its special forces.
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