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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Kate Lyons

Ben Roberts-Smith defamation appeal failed because ‘unlike most homicides, there were three eyewitnesses’, judges explain

Ben Roberts-Smith outside Federal Court in Sydney
Ben Roberts-Smith failed in his attempt to sue Nine newspapers and journalists Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters over their reports in 2018 which claimed he had committed war crimes. Photograph: Bianca de Marchi/AAP

Ben Roberts-Smith acted with “a certain recklessness or perhaps even brazenness” when he killed a man with a prosthetic leg in Afghanistan in full view of other soldiers by shooting him with a machine gun, the full bench of the federal court has found.

“The problem for [Roberts-Smith] is that, unlike most homicides, there were three eyewitnesses to this murder,” the judges wrote.

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