An Australian court on Friday ordered bail with travel restrictions for Ben Roberts-Smith, Australia’s most decorated living soldier, accused of five counts of war crimes committed while he was deployed more than a decade ago.
Roberts-Smith, 47, was arrested at Sydney airport last Tuesday by police, accused of his alleged involvement in the deaths of Afghan citizens in various incidents that occurred between 2009 and 2012 in the province of Uruzgan, in central Afghanistan. As detailed by the authorities after his arrest, the charges include both the direct execution of victims and participation as an instigator, accomplice or superior who ordered the murders. Each charge carries a maximum penalty of life in prison.
Judge Greg Grogin declared in a Sydney court that bail was “not punitive,” adding that the veteran of the elite Special Air Service regiment was entitled to the presumption of innocence, although the charges were serious if proven, according to several media reports. The magistrate has argued that “the matter would probably take years to come to court” and that there were exceptional circumstances that justified bail, despite the opposition of the Prosecutor’s Office, which feared that Roberts-Smith could try to contact witnesses.
The former military man, who appeared by videoconference at the hearing, must provide bail of 250,000 Australian dollars (152,000 euros) and refrain from contacting any prosecution witness, as conditions of bail, in addition to travel restrictions.
Following his arrest, Roberts-Smith spent more than a week in custody while his legal team awaited an in-person bail review hearing on Wednesday after police initially refused to grant it.
The former soldier, decorated with the Victoria Cross – Australia’s highest military recognition – was deployed between 2006 and 2012 six times in Afghanistan. In 2020, all of them disarmed. The former soldier has consistently denied allegations of wrongdoing, many of which were first published by newspapers in Nine Entertainment in a series of articles that began in 2018.
In 2023, he lost a defamation suit related to media allegations and was determined, based on the principle of preponderance of probabilities, to have been involved in the murder of then four Afghan civilians.
The Roberts-Smith case is part of the joint investigation by the Australian Federal Police and the Office of the Special Investigator, known as Operation Emerald-Argon, which since 2021 has been investigating alleged violations of the law committed by Australian troops in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016. To date, 53 cases have been opened, of which 39 have been closed due to lack of sufficient evidence, while another 10 are still ongoing.
