An Australian court ruled last week that decorated war veteran Ben Roberts-Smith committed war crimes while in Afghanistan.
Besanko on Thursday threw out Roberts-Smith’s defamation case against three Australian newspapers which had accused him of unlawful killings in Afghanistan. Besanko said the media outlets had proven substantial truth in their reporting, ending a case which lifted the veil of secrecy over the elite SAS.
Roberts-Smith was accused by the newspapers of ordering a lower-ranking soldier to shoot dead an “older Afghan male”, identified in the case as EKIA56, to “blood the rookie”, he said. Besanko found Roberts-Smith engaged in a “campaign of bullying” against another Australian soldier, including what he called a “death threat” when Roberts-Smith said: “if your performance doesn’t improve on our next patrol, you’re going to get a bullet in the back of the head”.