By Christine Chen
SYDNEY, April 7 (Reuters) – Australia’s most decorated living soldier was arrested on Tuesday and will be charged with five counts of war crime murders relating to the killing of unarmed civilians while on deployment in Afghanistan.
The man, whom police identified as a 47-year-old former Australian Defence Force (ADF) member and media named as Ben Roberts-Smith, was arrested at Sydney Airport on Tuesday morning.
He will be charged with five counts of war crimes in connection to the murder of five people in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012, Australian Federal Police (AFP) said. The maximum penalty for each charge is life imprisonment.
Roberts-Smith was hailed as a national hero after being awarded several top military honours, including the Victoria Cross, for his actions during six tours of Afghanistan from 2006 to 2012.
“It will be alleged the victims were not taking part in hostilities at the time of their alleged murder in Afghanistan,” AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett told a press conference.
“It will be alleged the victims were detained, unarmed and were under the control of ADF members when they were killed.”
Police would also allege the victims were shot by the accused or shot by subordinates acting on his orders and in his presence, she said.
Roberts-Smith has consistently denied allegations of wrongdoing during his service, some of which were first reported by Nine Entertainment newspapers in a series of articles starting in 2018.
Among the accusations reported were that Roberts-Smith had shot dead an unarmed Afghan teenager and kicked a handcuffed man off a cliff before ordering him to be shot dead.
Roberts-Smith unsuccessfully challenged the reports in what became Australia’s most expensive defamation trial, with a Federal Court judge ruling in 2023 the newspapers proved four of the six murder accusations they levelled. A final appeal bid was dismissed by the High Court in September 2025.
A 2020 report found credible evidence that members of Australia’s Special Air Service Regiment (SAS) killed dozens of unarmed prisoners in the lengthy Afghan war.
An investigation into the SAS soldier by the AFP and the Office of the Special Investigator (OSI), set up to examine allegations of war crimes by Australian defence forces in Afghanistan, was opened in 2021.
Ross Barnett, director of investigations at the OSI, said the process was complex and time-consuming because authorities were unable to go to Afghanistan and access the crime scenes.
“We don’t have access to the crime scenes, 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,” he said at the press conference.
The joint OSI-AFP commenced 53 investigations involving allegations of war crimes by ADF members in Afghanistan, with 10 ongoing. Another former special forces soldier is due to face trial for war crime murder next February, the OSI said.
“If the evidence leads to other people needing to be charged, you can be assured that will happen,” Barnett added.
Police said the accused man would appear before a local court in the state of New South Wales later on Tuesday.
Roberts-Smith’s lawyer for his defamation trial did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Christine Chen in Sydney; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
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