Australia’s most decorated living soldier, war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith VC, sued three Aussie newspapers for alleging that he committed war crimes in Afghanistan including murdering civilians and ordering subordinates to kill civilians. Turns out, he very likely did.
The judgment found, on the balance of probabilities, that war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith had:
- Kicked a handcuffed prisoner, Ali Jan, off a cliff in Darwan in 2012
- When Ali Jan survived the fall, ordered a subordinate to shoot the man dead
- Ordered the killing of an old man who was hiding in a tunnel
- Murdered a disabled man with a prosthetic leg using a para machine gun
The prosthetic leg was “souvenired” back to the Aussie soldiers’ base where it was drunk out of at their unofficial bar, the Fat Ladies’ Arms. What a healthy and completely unproblematic culture to breed in the country’s most highly-praised killing machines.
To be clear, the lawsuit was not about coming to a judgment of his guilt, just a matter of if the newspapers – the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, and the Canberra Times – had defamed him on the balance of probabilities. Lucky for us, they did not defame him.
The Age’s Nick McKenzie said: “Today is the day of justice. It’s a day of justice for those brave men of the SAS who stood up and told the truth about who Ben Roberts-Smith is: a war criminal, a bully, and a liar.”
The Victory Cross for Australia, a prestigious award only held by five people, was awarded to war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith in 2011. Good to know that the powers that be do thorough research.
War criminal Ben Roberts-Smith was the second person to ever receive the Victory Cross for Australia, which is the highest decoration in the Australian honors system. “The Victory Cross is highly prized and has been valued at over £400,000 at auctions”, Wikipedia reports. That’ll help with covering the court costs estimated to be upwards of £18.3m.
The Guardian reports that war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith is believed to have taken out a $2m loan from his employer to cover the case, which ran for a year. Something tells me he’s not going to be paying that back in a hurry.