An SAS soldier has contradicted in court Ben Roberts-Smith's version of events leading up to the alleged murders of two unarmed Afghan men who the witness said he found inside a tunnel.
The serving special forces soldier codenamed Person 42 recounted an April 2009 mission to clear a Taliban compound dubbed Whiskey 108 located in Uruzgan province.
His troop found a "typical Afghan courtyard" used for livestock where they located a bucket containing ammunition magazines and Russian grenades, he told the Federal Court on Wednesday.
A group of women began "agitating" and making noises indicating there was "something else" close by, he said.
"The way the women were acting (it) made me feel there was someone in the tunnel," he said.
Another detailed search exposed a secret entrance covered in mats, grass and animal feed, he said, where "at least two" men were hiding.
"They came out unarmed, freely, and relatively quickly," he said after issuing a "hands-up" directive in broken Pashto.
Person 42 said the discovery was made alongside Person 35, and Person 38, who helped pat the prisoners down before handing them on so the patrol could continue clearing the zone.
Victoria Cross recipient Roberts-Smith is suing The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times for defamation and denies their reports that he committed war crimes and murders in Afghanistan between 2006 and 2012.
The former SAS corporal has strenuously denied all wrongdoing including allegations he assaulted a woman.
The newspapers' barrister Nicholas Owens SC earlier submitted the two prisoners taken on the Whiskey 108 mission were a man with a prosthetic leg and an old man in a white robe.
Mr Roberts-Smith has denied this event took place.
"There were no men in the tunnel," Mr Roberts-Smith said under cross-examination last year.
The decorated veteran has also denied the accusation he carried the man with the fake leg out of the compound and shot him with a "extended burst" of machine gun fire.
Person 42 under cross-examination said he has completed hundreds of missions across various compounds in Afghanistan and conceded if nothing was "too specific or interesting" about an event they may be hard to recall.
But he denied the assertion of Mr Roberts-Smith's barrister Arthur Moses SC his memory of mission Whiskey 108 was fallible or that he was making up the presence of men in the tunnel.
"You're just making this up aren't you?" Mr Moses said.
"No I'm not," he said.
Another SAS witness codenamed Person 41 previously testified that his suppressor was borrowed by Mr Roberts-Smith and another soldier he ordered to "shoot" the other man from the tunnel.
Mr Roberts-Smith previously said the suggestion he ordered the man's death "shocked" and upset him, and that it was an "outrageous claim".
The trial has previously heard the insurgent's prosthetic leg was taken by another soldier and subsequently used as a drinking vessel at the SAS pub in Afghanistan known as the "Fat Ladies Arms".
The trial before Justice Anthony Besanko continues.
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