Decorated Australian Soldier Charged With Five Counts of Murder Over Afghan War Killings

Australia's most decorated living soldier was arrested at Sydney Domestic Airport on Monday and charged with five counts of war crime murder, accused of killing or ordering the deaths of unarmed Afghan civilians across two deployments more than a decade ago.

Ben Roberts-Smith, 47, a Victoria Cross recipient who served six tours in Afghanistan, was taken into custody after arriving on a flight from Brisbane. He faces charges under Section 268.70(1) of the Commonwealth Criminal Code, with each count carrying a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett, confirming the charges at a Sydney press conference, said the victims were "detained, unarmed and were under the control of ADF members when they were killed."

Three of the five charges relate to alleged killings at Kakarak in Uruzgan Province on or about April 12, 2009, one count alleging Roberts-Smith directly caused a death and two alleging he procured others to kill. The remaining two charges involve alleged killings at Darwan, also in Uruzgan Province, on or about September 11, 2012. Roberts-Smith served as a patrol commander with the Special Air Service Regiment across all six deployments between 2006 and 2012.

The prosecution is a direct product of the joint Office of the Special Investigator (OSI) and AFP task force established after the landmark Brereton Report, which found credible evidence of 39 unlawful killings by Australian SAS members in Afghanistan and recommended investigations into 19 current or former special forces members. The joint investigation has opened 53 matters in total; 39 have closed without charges, with 10 remaining active. OSI Director of Investigations Ross Barnett framed the challenge plainly: "Unlike a conventional investigation that's conducted in Australia, the OSI has been tasked with investigating literally dozens of murders, alleged to have been committed in the middle of a war zone in a country 9,000 kilometres from Australia that we can no longer access."

Roberts-Smith is only the second Australian Afghanistan veteran charged with a war crime. The first, former SAS soldier Oliver Schulz, 44, was charged in 2023 with the murder of Dad Mohammad, allegedly shot three times in the head in a wheat field in Uruzgan Province in May 2012. Schulz has pleaded not guilty; his trial in the NSW Supreme Court is scheduled for February 2027.

The criminal charges arrive after a years-long civil battle Roberts-Smith initiated himself. He sued the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and The Canberra Times over 2018 reporting that alleged he murdered unarmed Afghans. The 110-day defamation proceeding, the most expensive in Australian history, ended in June 2023 when Federal Court Justice Anthony Besanko, in a 726-page judgment, found the newspapers had proved four of the six murder allegations on the balance of probabilities. Among specific findings, Besanko determined that Roberts-Smith carried a man with a prosthetic leg to a site outside a compound called Whiskey 108 at Kakarak and shot him dead. The Full Court upheld that ruling in May 2025 and the High Court dismissed Roberts-Smith's final appeal in September 2025, opening the door to criminal prosecution.

Reaction to the arrest split sharply. Rawan Arraf of the Australian Centre for International Justice called it "a significant and long-awaited step for victims and affected communities" and urged the government to consider reparations for Afghan victims. Amnesty International Australia described the charges as "a critical step for accountability and justice for Afghan communities." Senator Pauline Hanson argued former special forces soldiers should not remain "in limbo years later because of ongoing investigations."

Barrett left little doubt that Monday's charges may not be the last. "If the evidence leads to other people needing to be charged, you can be assured that will happen," she said, with ten OSI investigations still open.