dismissed in May last year<\/a>, when the Full Court upheld the findings of the trial judge Justice Anthony Besanko.<\/p>\nIn maintaining his innocence after the High Court refused to hear his case in September, Roberts-Smith described the allegations against him in the defamation case as “egregious” and “spiteful”.<\/p>\n
Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner Krissy Barrett said it will be alleged the victims were unarmed Afghan nationals who “were not taking part in hostilities at the time of their alleged murder”.<\/p>\n
She said the charges come as a result of a “complex” investigation that was undertaken “thoroughly and meticulously” since 2021 by the AFP and Office of the Special Investigator (OSI).<\/p>\n
“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,” Commissioner Barrett said at a media conference in Sydney.<\/p>\n
The AFP said the 47-year-old was expected to be charged with five counts of “war crime – murder” later on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The maximum penalty for the offence is life imprisonment.<\/p>\n
They include allegations he intentionally caused the death of a person in April 2009 and in another offence “aided abetted, counselled or procured” someone to cause the death of someone on the same day in Kakarak, Uruzgan Province.<\/p>\n
The three other charges accuse the former soldier of causing the murder of – and procuring the murder of – civilians in Darwan and Syahchow in September and October in 2012.<\/p>\n
Commissioner Barrett said Roberts-Smith was expected to face a New South Wales court later today.<\/p>\n
A ‘challenging’ investigation<\/p>\n
OSI Director of Investigations Ross Barnett said Roberts-Smith’s arrest was a “significant step” under “challenging circumstances” and he was “entitled to the presumption of innocence until determined otherwise”.<\/p>\n
Roberts-Smith’s case is one of 53 war crimes allegations the agency has investigated since 2021.<\/p>\n
In total 39 of those have been finalised with no charges, but 10 are currently ongoing.<\/p>\n
Barnett has not ruled out further arrests as investigations continue.<\/p>\n
“If the evidence leads to other people needing to be charged, you can be assured that will happen,” he said.<\/p>\n
This is the second time an Australian soldier has been charged with committing war crimes in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
In 2023 a different defence force soldier was charged with war crime murder, his trial is expected to take place in February next year.<\/p>\n
“The alleged conduct related to these charges is confined to a very small section of our trusted and respected ADF which keeps our country safe,” Commissioner Barrett said.<\/p>\n
“The majority of the ADF do our country proud.”<\/p>\n
Barnett said it was a “challenge” that investigators could not physically enter Afghanistan to investigate the claims against Roberts-Smith.<\/p>\n
“So the challenge for investigators is that because we can’t go to that country, we don’t have access to the crime scene,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We don’t have photographs, site plans, measurements, the recovery of projectiles, blood spatter analysis, all of those things we would normally get at a crime scene.<\/p>\n
“If you add to that that we don’t have access to the deceased, there’s no post-mortem. Therefore, there’s no, official cause of death.”<\/p>\n
Mr Barnett said families of the Afghan victims may not be aware of the development because it was “not safe” to make contact with them inside the Taliban-run nation.<\/p>\n
Albanese declines to comment on Roberts-Smith’s arrest<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declined to comment when asked whether the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions sought authorisation from the federal government before Mr Roberts-Smith’s arrest.<\/p>\n
“That is a matter that its very important that there not be political engagement in what is a matter that is now the subject of legal proceedings,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I have no intention of prejudicing a matter that clearly is a legal matter and that’s before the courts and any comment would do so.”<\/p>\n
– ABC News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Victoria Cross recipient, 47, was arrested at Sydney Airport on Tuesday morning. Photo: AFP \/ SAEED KHAN…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368088,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-368087","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-podcasts","13":"tag-public-radio","14":"tag-radio-new-zealand","15":"tag-rnz","16":"tag-top-news","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-topnews","19":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Former](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/4JQJJL4_AFP__20250501__446K39D__v1__HighRes__AustraliaAfghanistanMilitaryJusticeDefamation_jpg.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n