Australia’s most decorated soldier has vehemently denied war crime allegations in a lengthy interview before his blockbuster criminal trial.
Ben Roberts-Smith, a former SAS soldier, was arrested in April and charged with the offences of murdering or ordering the murders of five unarmed detainees while deployed in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012.
He sat down for a two-and-a-half-hour interview with Sydney radio 2GB’s Ben Fordham, which was broadcast on YouTube on Thursday morning.
Mr Fordham explicitly asked the 47-year-old if he shot civilians.
“I didn’t bloody murder anyone,” Roberts-Smith said.
Answering a series of rapid-fire questions, Roberts-Smith bluntly denied the accusations.
“Did you shoot prisoners?” Mr Fordham asked.
“No,” Roberts-Smith replied.
“Did you see anyone else shooting prisoners?”
“No.”
A Federal Court judge previously found Roberts-Smith was responsible for a number of killings, in a landmark defamation trial against Nine newspapers.
Justice Anthony Besanko found Roberts-Smith machine-gunned an unarmed prisoner in the back during a 2009 raid on a compound codenamed Whiskey 108, taking the man’s prosthetic leg back to Australia to use as a beer-drinking vessel.
But Roberts-Smith bluntly rejected allegations he drank from it.
“I didn’t drink out of it, which is just the truth. I did not and that’s for personal reasons,” he told Mr Fordham.
“The dark humour … military organisations rely upon to maintain their sanity will sometimes be misconstrued.”
In the wide-ranging conversation, which was conducted in Queensland on October 8, Roberts-Smith described his arrest on a plane as he arrived into Sydney from Brisbane on April 6, despite previously offering to turn himself in to police.
He was visiting Sydney for the day for a surprise shopping trip for his teenage daughters.
“It was a show arrest, and I think everyone’s accepted that,” Roberts-Smith said.
He also described his 10 days in a “suicide cell” at Silverwater prison, saying he was forced to wrap underwear over his head to block out the fluorescent lights while he slept.
His court case is next set to be heard at Downing Centre Local Court in December, and will eventually proceed to trial.
He raised concerns about finding 12 jury members who had not already formed an opinion about his guilt or innocence.
“Can there be a fair trial? I can’t answer that question. I’m sure that argument’s going to be had,” Roberts-Smith said.
At times emotional and choking back tears when discussing members of his battalion killed, the former soldier insisted he operated within the rules of engagement.
“I’ve never committed a war crime in my military career,” he said.
Roberts-Smith said he did not regret a single thing.
The Victoria Cross recipient is accused of machine-gunning Afghan prisoner Mohammed Essa and ordering the execution of his son Ahmadullah to “blood the rookie” during a raid at a compound in April 2009.
The then-SAS soldier allegedly placed firearms on the bodies to falsely claim they were enemy combatants, court documents said.
In August 2012, at the village of Darwan, Roberts-Smith is accused of kicking a handcuffed man named Ali Jan off a 10-metre cliff before ordering that he be dragged to a creek bed and shot.
Two months later at Syahchow, he allegedly lined up two prisoners in a corn field before shooting one of them alongside another soldier.
He ordered a subordinate to shoot the other prisoner before throwing a grenade on the bodies to cover up what he had done, prosecutors allege.
“All I’m asking for is a fair shake, mate,” Roberts-Smith said regarding the ongoing court case.
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