RASC News Agency: In a historic ruling that confronts the darkest chapters of Australia’s military engagement abroad, the Federal Court of Australia has unanimously upheld the war crimes verdict against Ben Roberts-Smith once celebrated as the nation’s most decorated living soldier. The judgment confirms that Roberts-Smith was directly involved in the cold-blooded execution of four unarmed Afghanistani civilians during his deployment in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012. A trio of senior justices in Sydney rejected his appeal, affirming the previous 2023 ruling that found him complicit in grave breaches of international humanitarian law. Far from being an isolated deviation, the court established a sustained pattern of unlawful violence by the former special forces operative, who once stood as a national symbol of battlefield heroism.
Roberts-Smith, a recipient of the prestigious Victoria Cross, had cultivated a public persona as the embodiment of Australian military valor. Yet the Federal Court’s decision lays bare a more harrowing truth: beneath the medals lay acts of grotesque brutality perpetrated not in the chaos of war, but in deliberate, calculated violations of the rules of armed conflict. Among the most shocking incidents confirmed by the court was the execution of a defenseless Afghanistani man with a prosthetic leg. After killing him, Roberts-Smith allegedly retained the artificial limb as a war trophy and used it to drink beer at his military base an act so barbaric that it underscores not only a disdain for civilian life, but a culture of impunity that permeated elite military units.
Another documented atrocity involved Roberts-Smith ordering a subordinate to execute an unarmed Afghanistani farmer who had been handcuffed and thrown off a cliff. These were not battlefield decisions made in moments of confusion; they were, as the court found, premeditated war crimes committed with a chilling sense of entitlement and disregard for human dignity. Despite these damning revelations, Roberts-Smith mounted a high-profile legal campaign to overturn the verdict, claiming procedural errors and judicial misjudgment in the original trial. However, the Federal Court dismissed his arguments in their entirety, concluding that the evidence was overwhelming and the initial ruling both sound and legally robust. Media reports indicate that the cost of his legal defense and appeal proceedings has now surpassed 22.5 million Australian dollars.
This ruling is not merely a legal milestone it is a profound indictment of Australia’s military legacy in Afghanistan. While foreign interventions in the country were often justified under the banner of counterterrorism and democracy-building, the actions of soldiers like Roberts-Smith expose a more unsettling reality: Afghanistani civilians, already crushed by decades of war and insurgency, were too often treated as disposable and invisible casualties of imperial ambition. Ironically, Roberts-Smith was honored by the Australian state for his role in fighting the Taliban, yet the civilians he killed were not combatants nor were they extremists. They were farmers, prisoners, and ordinary people caught in the cross hairs of a military apparatus unmoored from ethical restraint.
For years, Afghanistani victims and their families have had no voice, no platform, and no justice. The Taliban, now reinstated as a de facto regime, continues to whitewash its own crimes under a veneer of religious authority. Meanwhile, foreign soldiers like Roberts-Smith, operating with the backing of sophisticated states, committed atrocities that rival those of the insurgents they claimed to be fighting. The Federal Court’s ruling offers a rare glimpse of accountability in a global system that often shields its own. It is a crucial step toward truth, though not nearly enough to restore the lives lost or heal the wounds inflicted on Afghanistani society.
Roberts-Smith has vowed to take his case to the High Court of Australia, but the moral weight of this judgment cannot be reversed. It is a reminder that no uniform, no medal, and no flag can excuse the unlawful taking of human life. For the countless Afghanistani civilians whose suffering remains undocumented and unpunished, this verdict represents a small, long-overdue reckoning. The blood they shed unacknowledged for far too long now stains more than one man’s reputation; it implicates an entire system that allowed such violence to flourish under the guise of freedom.
