Former SAS soldier Ben Roberts-Smith could face life in prison for alleged war crimes involving the murder of unarmed Afghan civilians.
Australia’s most decorated living soldier was arrested at Sydney Domestic Airport on Tuesday morning after extensive allegations he murdered Afghans while deployed in the country between 2009 and 2012.
Australian Federal Police commissioner Krissy Barrett declined to name Roberts-Smith, but confirmed a 47-year-old former ADF member would be charged with five courts of war crime murder, which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
“It will be alleged the victims were detained, unarmed and were under the control of ADF members when they were killed,” she told reporters.
“It will be alleged the victims were shot by the accused or shot by subordinate members of the ADF in the presence of and acting on the orders of the accused.”
She noted the victims were not taking part in hostilities at the time of their alleged murder in the war zone.
The allegations include that Roberts-Smith intentionally caused the death of two people in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012.
He is also accused of aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring another person to commit a murder on three separate occasions.
Asked if others were involved in those matters, the Office of the Special Investigator said investigations were ongoing.
Roberts-Smith is expected to appear in a NSW court either late on Tuesday or on Wednesday morning.
The Office of the Special Investigator, comprised of 54 investigators, launched an investigation into the soldier in 2021.
In collaboration with the AFP, it has launched 53 investigations involving allegations of war crimes by ADF members in Afghanistan, 39 of which have been provisionally finalised.
“The OSI has been tasked with investigating literally dozens of murders alleged to have been committed in the middle of a war zone in a country 9000 kilometres from Australia,” OSI director Ross Barnett said.
“Because we can’t go to that country…. we don’t have access to the crime scenes… we don’t have access to the deceased, there’s no post-mortem… so it’s a very challenging starting point for all these investigations.”
Roberts-Smith will be the second Australian soldier to be charged with war crimes under domestic law after another ex-SAS soldier, Oliver Schulz, was charged in 2023 over the war crime of the 2012 murder of a young man in Afghanistan.
Schulz has maintained his innocence. His matter is yet to go to trial, but the case could provide a blueprint for Roberts-Smith.
A Federal Court judge previously found Roberts-Smith was responsible for a number of killings in a blockbuster defamation trial against Nine newspapers.
The articles were published in 2018 and the alleged war criminal has maintained his innocence.
Justice Anthony Besanko’s findings were on the balance of probabilities, rather than the criminal standard of beyond reasonable doubt.
Justice Besanko found Roberts-Smith machine-gunned an unarmed prisoner in the back, taking the man’s prosthetic leg back to Australia to use as a beer drinking vessel, during a 2009 raid on a compound codenamed Whiskey 108.
He also said Roberts-Smith stood silent while a rookie soldier was ordered to execute an elderly Afghan prisoner so he could be “blooded”.
Justice Besanko found one of the newspapers’ central claims – that Mr Roberts-Smith had kicked an unarmed and handcuffed man, Ali Jan, off a 10-metre cliff and then ensured he was shot – was true.