Australia’s Special Air Service regiment was riven by a “culture war” with one faction obsessed by a “pagan warrior ethos” where “killing was a sacrament in itself”, the assistant defence minister, Andrew Hastie, has told Ben Roberts-Smith’s defamation trial.
Hastie, a former SAS officer who resigned from the military when he was preselected to run for parliament, has been subpoenaed to give evidence by three newspapers defending a defamation action brought by his former comrade and Victoria Cross recipient Roberts-Smith.
Roberts-Smith alleges their media reports portrayed him as committing war crimes, including murder, as well as acts of bullying.
The newspapers are pleading a defence of truth. Roberts-Smith denies all wrongdoing.
Hastie said that as a new parliamentarian in 2016, he was invited into the office of then prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, for a one-on-one meeting about general rumours of misconduct by Australian special forces in Afghanistan.
“PM please tread cautiously here,” Hastie said he told Turnbull at the time. “I said ‘Serious allegations have been levelled and they have to be answered’.”
Hastie served alongside Roberts-Smith on a mission in October 2012 to Syahchow, in Uruzgan province, where the newspapers allege a “blooding” incident took place involving Roberts-Smith. The practice involves a new soldier being initiated into the regiment by being ordered to register their first “kill” on operation – allegedly often of an unarmed prisoner.
In their defence claim, the newspapers allege Roberts-Smith ordered another soldier, Person 66, to kill a captive, unarmed Afghan man who’d been taken out into a field.
Under cross-examination on Monday, Hastie was asked what he believed had happened at Syahchow. “It’s my view that Person 66 was blooded,” he said.
Hastie, on the ground during that mission, said in evidence on Friday he remembered Roberts-Smith’s patrol using an interpreter to “tactically question” a number of Afghans up against a wall.
He told the court that after moving to a different part of the compound, he heard the words “shots fired” and “two Ekia” – enemy killed in action – over the troops’ radio, but that he didn’t hear any shots.
He said he later saw Person 66 in the compound at Syahchow “standing slightly off from the rest of the patrol looking nervous”.
He testified he also saw Roberts-Smith again on the mission. “Mr Roberts-Smith walked past me … and he looked me in the eye and said ‘Just a couple more dead cunts’,” Hastie said.
Hastie was present when Roberts-Smith gave an oral debrief of the mission to senior SAS command. He told the court on Friday that Roberts-Smith’s version represented an “alternate universe”.
“The reality described by Mr Roberts-Smith was different to the one in actuality.”
Hastie said he was disquieted by what had happened at Syahchow and, before deploying in command of an SAS troop the next year, briefed his subordinates on the need to obey the laws of war.
“I believed something unlawful had happened at Syahchow in the weeks after, which is why I reinforced with my own troop standards [of adherence to rules of engagement],” he said on Monday.
Roberts-Smith has denied the Syahchow allegation. Asked directly during his evidence last year if he had ordered Person 66 to execute a prisoner, Roberts-Smith said: “I did not.”
Person 66 began giving evidence late on Monday.
He was not asked questions specifically about Syahchow and objected to giving evidence about missions in Afghanistan on the basis of self-incrimination. That objection is currently being considered by Justice Anthony Besanko.
Under cross-examination, Hastie told the court the SAS was deeply factionalised during the period of his service, and he was deeply troubled by soldiers adhering to what he described as a “pagan warrior culture”.
“I didn’t get on with quite a few people at the regiment at that time. There was something of a culture war going on.
“In the warrior culture that was being emphasised at the time … shorn of just-war theory … killing became a sacrament in itself.”
Roberts-Smith’s lawyers have repeatedly suggested the allegations against the decorated soldier were from a small group of comrades jealous of his military accolades and prominent public profile.
Hastie denied he had been critical of Roberts-Smith to raise his own profile as a parliamentarian or that he had briefed journalists in the hope of receiving positive political coverage.
He said the reason he spoke to journalists about the allegations made against the SAS was that journalists had come to him already informed of the allegations – and that he believed the “fourth estate” was necessary to hold government institutions to account.
“My view is that the system failed, which is why public interest journalism is important.”
During a fraught exchange with Roberts-Smith’s barrister Arthur Moses SC, Hastie rejected repeated assertions he had told people Roberts-Smith “was a war criminal”.
“I’ve expressed caution to people … [but] I don’t say war criminal. There are serious allegations of misconduct being made against him. I’ve been very guarded in how I talk to people.”
Hastie was repeatedly asked whether he believed Roberts-Smith was a war criminal.
“An alleged war criminal, yes, if some of the things that are being said are true, then yes.” The trial continues.
