A serving SAS soldier has told a federal court hearing that fellow troops were openly hostile to Ben Roberts-Smith and believed the gallantry that earned him the Victoria Cross may have been “falsified”.
A former comrade of Roberts-Smith, a still-serving SAS soldier anonymised in court as Person 41, has given two days of evidence about serving alongside the VC recipient in Afghanistan.
He said he witnessed Roberts-Smith order a subordinate soldier to execute an unarmed elderly Afghan man allegedly found hiding in a tunnel during a raid, and also saw Roberts-Smith “frog-march” another unarmed Afghan man, who had a prosthetic leg, outside the same compound before throwing him to the ground and shooting him dead with a machine gun.
Person 41 said he believed Roberts-Smith was a competent and brave soldier who could be relied upon to have his comrades’ backs.
But he told the court on Thursday there were “haters” within the SAS regiment who thought Roberts-Smith was “arrogant”, “thought he was better than everyone else” and was undeserving of his numerous decorations.
Roberts-Smith is suing the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Canberra Times for defamation over a series of reports he alleges are defamatory and portray him as committing war crimes, including murder. The newspapers are pleading a defence of truth. Roberts Smith denies any wrongdoing.
Person 41 said two other soldiers, known by the court as Person 7 and Person 42, did not believe Roberts-Smith deserved his Victoria Cross, the Australian military’s highest honour.
Roberts-Smith was awarded the VC for storming two enemy machine gun posts during a raid at Tizak, in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province in 2010.
Person 41 told the court that Person 7’s dislike of Roberts-Smith stemmed from a disbelief over the action.
“It always centred around the fact that Person 7 believed ‘RS’ [Roberts-Smith] wasn’t deserving of the Victoria Cross and the events leading up to that were falsified,” he told the court.
Person 41 told the court another soldier, Person 42, believed the events that led to Roberts-Smith’s VC “may have been falsified”.
“I believe it was along the lines of his arrogance and he thought he was better than everyone else.”
Roberts-Smith has previously told the court the Victoria Cross “put a target on my back”. He said he was “white-anted” by other soldiers jealous of his success as a soldier.
On Tuesday, Person 41 detailed before the court the deaths of two men during a raid on a compound known as Whiskey 108 in the village of Kakarak, a known insurgent stronghold, in Uruzgan province, on 12 April 2009. This occurred the year before Roberts-Smith’s VC action.
Person 41 said, as the compound was being “cleared” by a number of SAS platoons, Roberts-Smith and another soldier, Person 4, borrowed a suppressor from him.
He then saw the two soldiers walk over to a captive, unarmed elderly Afghan man, kneeling next to the entrance to a concealed tunnel, where the man had been found hiding.
He said Roberts-Smith walked the man about 2 metres until he was in front of Person 4, “then kicked him in the back of the legs behind the knees until he was kneeling down … RS pointed to the Afghan and said to Person 4 ‘shoot him’”.
Later in the same raid, Person 41 said he was outside the walled compound when he saw Roberts-Smith “frog-marching” another Afghan man away from the compound entrance.
“He [Roberts-Smith] had his machine gun in his right arm, holding it up, and sort of frog-marching the Afghan by the scruff of the neck with his left arm.
“I turned to face ‘RS’ to see what was happening. He then proceeded to throw the Afghan male down on to the ground. The Afghan male landed on his back. ‘RS’ then reached down and grabbed him by the shoulder and flipped him on to his stomach. Then I observed him lower his machine gun and shoot approximately three to five rounds into the back of the Afghan male.”
“After he’d done that, he looked up and saw me standing there, and looked at me and said ‘are we all cool, we good?’ And I just replied, ‘yeah mate, no worries’.”
Person 41 learned later that this man was disabled, and had a prosthetic leg.
Under cross-examination on Wednesday, Person 41 defended his evidence.
Arthur Moses SC, acting for Roberts-Smith, put to Person 41 his testimony was not true.
“You’re lying aren’t you?”
“No.”
Moses put it to Person 41 of the alleged murder of the elderly Afghan: “it didn’t happen”.
“It did happen and I know what I saw.”
Moses said the murder of the disabled man shot outside the compound “did not happen”.
“It did happen.”
“You’re not able to tell the difference between fact and fiction are you?”
“That’s incorrect.”
Person 41 said it was more than a decade after the event, in 2020, before he told anybody what he had witnessed at Whiskey 108, because he feared being ostracised and for his career in the regiment.
He said disclosing the events could have led to him being returned to Australia with “everybody knowing you’d dobbed in, so to speak”.
Person 41 admitted to drinking from the prosthetic leg souvenired from Whiskey 108 by another soldier, and which was used as a drinking vessel at the Australian soldiers’ unofficial bar on base, the Fat Ladies Arms. He said he was now ashamed of having done so.
