The authorities in Australia charged a former elite soldier on Tuesday with five counts of “war crime — murder” over the deaths of Afghan nationals from 2009 to 2012, in what could be the most consequential military prosecution in the country’s history.
The authorities did not identify the former soldier in the statement about the charges. But the announcement followed the arrest of a 47-year-old suspect, identified by the local media as Ben Roberts-Smith, at Sydney Airport earlier that day, with details from the police linking him to cases that have been under investigation for at least five years.
Mr. Roberts-Smith was once Australia’s most decorated soldier. A former patrol commander of the Special Air Service Regiment, he received Australia’s top two military honors and was named Australia’s Father of the Year in 2013, the same year he left the army.
The Australian Federal Police commissioner, Krissy Barrett, said at a news conference on Tuesday that the Afghan victims had been unarmed and were “not taking part in hostilities at the time of their alleged murder.”
She alleged that the former soldier had shot the victims or ordered his subordinates to do so while the victims were “under the control” of the Australian military.
Accusations around the incidents first emerged in Australian media outlets. Mr. Roberts-Smith sued three newspapers that had accused him of killing unarmed Afghans. He lost those cases in 2023.
Mr. Roberts-Smith’s previous legal representative did not immediately respond to queries. It is unclear who his current representative is.
A police statement issued earlier on Tuesday said that the expected charges against the former soldier were related to allegations that he “caused the death” or “aided, abetted, counseled or procured another person to intentionally cause the death” of five people from 2009 to 2012 in Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan.
The maximum penalty for the war crime of murder is life imprisonment.
The defendant is expected to appear at a court in Sydney on Wednesday.
Mr. Roberts-Smith’s public image was shattered in 2018, when The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Canberra Times published a series of articles accusing him of killing or of being complicit in the killing of Afghans. In one version of events reported by the Australian media, one victim was a laborer who was handcuffed and kicked off a cliff.
Mr. Roberts-Smith sued the newspapers for defamation in a civil case, called Australia’s trial of the century. The judge ruled against him and found that the newspapers had proved their accounts of his actions were substantially true. Subsequent attempts to overturn the ruling were dismissed.
Mr. Roberts-Smith has previously maintained his innocence.
The current case against him stems from one of the Australian police’s 53 investigations into potential war crimes by Australian military members in Afghanistan. Of those, one resulted in another former soldier being charged, 10 are still pending and 39 were dropped.
Laura Chung is a Sydney-based reporter and researcher for The Times, covering Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific.
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