The allegation is not military or media gossip. It was made by the same barrister who convinced a Federal Court judge that Mr Roberts-Smith committed war crimes in Afghanistan, Nicholas Owens, now a judge in the same court.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour Honour, to be clear, we do allege that Person 4 is a murderer,\u201d Mr Owens said during a defamation lawsuit in 2022.<\/p>\n
Mr Peters, a pseudonym, will not go to jail for murder. Formal allegations tendered to court on Friday suggest he has been promised immunity for war crimes in return for testifying against Mr Roberts-Smith, who has been charged with five counts of war crimes \u2014 murder.<\/p>\n
Federal prosecutors believe Mr Peters is a killer. He told them that on April 12, 2009, he executed a prisoner at a compound in southern Afghanistan that had been used by the Taliban to attack regular Australian soldiers, according to court documents.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors will allege that after the building, known as Whiskey 108, was partially destroyed by a bomb dropped from a Western aircraft, a father and son were pulled from a tunnel.<\/p>\n
The son, Ahmadullah Essa, who had one leg, was allegedly killed by Mr Roberts-Smith with a machine gun. Then \u201cRoberts-Smith grabbed Mohammed Essa, placed him on his knees in front of Person 4, and said to Person 4, \u2018Shoot that c..t,\u2019\u201d according to the allegations.<\/p>\n
\u201cPerson 4, understanding this to be an order, shot Mohammad Essa in the head, killing him,\u201d the 24-page document states. \u201cPerson 4 has admitted their role in this incident.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Roberts-Smith told a court in 2021 the allegations were \u201cridiculous\u201d and he shot an insurgent running near a cornfield carrying a bolt-action rifle.<\/p>\n
No excuse<\/p>\n
Australian soldiers sent to Afghanistan received briefings from military lawyers that it was illegal to kill prisoners. Following orders is not an excuse under laws developed to prosecute Nazis and Japanese commanders after World War II.<\/p>\n
Melanie O\u2019Brien, a University of Western Australia law professor writing a book on war crimes in Afghanistan, said prosecutors should not protect soldiers who committed crimes to secure the convictions of their superiors.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t be acquitted because you carried out an unlawful order especially if you knew it was unlawful,\u201d she said. \u201cOur soldiers receive quite extensive training under the laws of war so they know they will not be allowed to execute someone who is unarmed and not a combatant.\u201d<\/p>\n
A lawyer who represented Mr Peters in Mr Roberts-Smith\u2019s defamation lawsuit said revealing his identity \u201cwill knowingly potentially inflict severe harm\u201d. Mr Peters was a witness for Nine, which Mr Roberts-Smith unsuccessfully sued in 2018 for accusing him of murder.<\/p>\n
Mr Peters\u2019 real name has not been made public, although the Australian War Memorial inadvertently published his first name in 2012.<\/p>\n
A father of two, he describes himself as a farmer who was older than most of the SAS soldiers during the war. The greatest achievement of his military career was on June 11, 2010, when he attacked a machine-gun position in the village of Tizak with Mr Roberts-Smith and another SAS soldier known as Dean Roddan.<\/p>\n
![\"Ben](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/6f641b88203e6ed63a2e7e62fc4eacdbce62fc65.jpg\")
Ben Roberts-Smith has vowed to clear his name. Credit: AWM\/PR IMAGE<\/p>\n
As the three men desperately fought three Taliban machine gunners and several firing assault rifles in the courtyard of a mosque, Mr Peters leaned out from behind a tree several times to protect Mr Roberts-Smith as he threw a grenade and charged the courtyard. Mr Peters followed and helped kill two men who had fled inside the mosque.<\/p>\n
After the battle, all six SAS soldiers in the team posed for a group photo in front of six dead Afghans and their weapons. Mr Roberts-Smith was the only one who didn\u2019t smile for the camera.<\/p>\n
The corporal was recognised for his actions with a Victoria Cross, the highest medal for bravery. Mr Peters was initially passed over, a slight that left him \u201churt and disappointed\u201d, according to Anthony Besanko, the judge who oversaw the defamation case.<\/p>\n
Three years later, after the army reviewed the battle, Mr Peters was awarded a Medal for Gallantry, the third-ranked bravery decoration.<\/p>\n
Mr Peters has said that he was told by other SAS soldiers that he deserved the Victoria Cross, not Mr Roberts-Smith.<\/p>\n
At an SAS barbecue in Perth in 2011, his wife approached the sergeant in charge of their team and demanded to know why her husband did not receive the venerated medal, according to court evidence.<\/p>\n
The sergeant told her to \u201cpull her neck in\u201d, he said in court.<\/p>\n
Second in charge<\/p>\n
In between the fight at the Whiskey 108 compound and the belated decoration, the two men worked closely together. In 2012, they returned to Afghanistan as members of the same team, Gothic 2. Although Mr Roberts-Smith was still a corporal, he had been promoted to team leader, an influential position in the SAS. Mr Peters became his deputy.<\/p>\n
They both preferred the Mk 14 Enhanced Battle Rifle to the special forces\u2019 standard M4 assault rifle. Although the gun was much heavier, its large-calibre bullets inflicted far greater damage.<\/p>\n
No evidence has emerged that Mr Peters asked to be assigned to a different team, or leave the SAS, after allegedly being ordered to execute Mohammad Essa.<\/p>\n
He was present for the most notorious allegation against Mr Roberts-Smith \u2014 that the giant soldier kicked Ali Jan, a farmer, off a river embankment in the village of Darwan on September 11, 2012.<\/p>\n
Mr Peters told the court that after the handcuffed man plunged down the slope, suffering facial injuries, he was dragged to a large tree by Mr Peters and another SAS soldier, who shot him. He said the murder was covered up by placing a two-way radio on his corpse to create the impression the dead man was a Taliban insurgent.<\/p>\n
Mr Roberts-Smith said he shot a Taliban spotter who was found carrying a radio. \u201cThere was no kick,\u201d he said in court. \u201cI don\u2019t remember seeing a cliff either.\u201d<\/p>\n
Investigators allege that six weeks after the Darwan incident, near the village of Syahchow, two Afghan prisoners were lined up on the edge of a cornfield and shot on Mr Roberts-Smith\u2019s orders. To cover up the deaths, a grenade was allegedly thrown at their bodies.<\/p>\n
Whether Mr Peters, the second-in charge, saw or heard anything is unclear from court papers filed in the murder case.<\/p>\n
Mr Roberts-Smith denied he executed anyone at Syahchow.<\/p>\n
No comment<\/p>\n
In 2022, Mr Peters was asked in court what happened at Whiskey 108, the compound where the one-legged man died. \u201cYour Honour, I object on the grounds that I may incriminate myself,\u201d he told Justice Besanko.<\/p>\n
Even when offered a deal that nothing he said could be used against him in other cases, including a murder trial, he refused to talk. The judge decided not to force him to answer questions, which meant Mr Roberts-Smith barrister, Arthur Moses, could not ask him if he killed anyone there.<\/p>\n
Mr Moses suggested in court that Mr Peters might have agreed with Nine, the media company, to testify against Mr Roberts-Smith if he wasn\u2019t asked about Whiskey 108.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will put to him directly that he has done a deal with the respondents in respect of this matter, and he has come here to give evidence about this point and wasn\u2019t going to be the subject of having to be pressed to answer a question about whether he\u2019s a murderer,\u201d Mr Moses told the judge.<\/p>\n
That was when Nine\u2019s barrister, Mr Owens, took the unusual step of accusing his side\u2019s witness of being a criminal.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour Honour, to be clear, we do allege that Person 4 is a murderer,\u201d he said. \u201cWe say that he shot a PUC (person under control) at Whiskey 108, after Mr Roberts-Smith kicked that PUC to his knees and said, \u2018Shoot him\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, in the context of this proceeding, that accusation is made not directly in order to impugn Person 4. We make it because … we say that in the circumstances Mr Roberts-Smith was complicit in, and responsible for, that murder. So the murder that we allege against Person 4 is one that is an important building block in our case against Mr Roberts-Smith.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Peters left the Army in 2021 on medical grounds.<\/p>\n
After telling his psychiatrist that he might hurt himself if required to give evidence, he was not forced to answer some questions about Whiskey 108. The five types of medicine he was being treated with were blocked from publication by a suppression order.<\/p>\n
Immunity deals<\/p>\n
Even his lawyer, Ben Kremer, told the court he might have broken the law at Darwan by not protecting Mr Jan.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd not all steps were taken, or no steps may have been taken, so that there is (criminal) liability engaged or responsibility engaged on behalf of the person with effective authority, that is, the 2IC over the member of the troop,\u201d Dr Kremer told the court.<\/p>\n
As for Mr Peters, he said in court his bravery at Tizak, when both men stormed the Taliban courtyard, was equal to Mr Roberts-Smith\u2019s. The other soldier received the Victoria Cross because \u201cwe lost a lot of people and they wanted a good news story\u201d.<\/p>\n
Asked by Mr Moses if the medal \u201chas caused you to deeply resent Mr Roberts-Smith?\u201d he answered: \u201cI loved him as a brother.\u201d<\/p>\n
Three other SAS veterans have been promised legal protection to testify against Mr Roberts-Smith. One was a medic in the Battle of Tizak. The other was a member of his team at Darwan. The third executed a prisoner at Syahchow, according to investigators.<\/p>\n
\u201cEach of these witnesses has admitted their personal involvement in executing one or more detainees at the direction or with the complicity of ROBERTS-SMITH,\u201d the written allegations state. \u201cIn each instance, ROBERTS-SMITH was their military superior. These witnesses have provided written accounts of their actions. Each details other murders they witnessed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Which may lead Australians to ask: how do you get away with murder in war?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jason Peters used to say he loved Ben Roberts-Smith like a brother. In recent days the former Special…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[63,43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-621730","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}