Ben Roberts-Smith committed war crimes in my country – his targets are the forgotten victims of Australia’s Afghan war

Darwan, in the Uruzgan province of Afghanistan Photograph: Federal Court of Australia

With a federal court judge finding Ben Roberts-Smith – the country’s most decorated soldier – either murdered or was complicit in and responsible for the murder of unarmed civilians while serving in the Australian military in Afghanistan, Australia must now turn its attention to the real victims of this conflict.

While the publication of the full judgment has been delayed, the judge in Roberts-Smith’s failed defamation case found that, on the balance of probabilities, the newspapers he was suing had proven in their defence that Roberts-Smith kicked a handcuffed prisoner off a cliff in Uruzgan province in 2012 before ordering a subordinate Australian soldier to shoot the injured man dead.