The former Australian federal police commissioner Mick Keelty has relinquished his Order of Australia honour, six years after he passed information received from serving police officers to Ben Roberts-Smith, alerting him to a pending war crimes investigation.
Keelty retired from the AFP in 2009 after a 35-year law-enforcement career, including eight as AFP commissioner.
He was made an officer in the general division of the Order of Australia in the Queen’s birthday honours in 2011.
Guardian Australia has confirmed Keelty resigned from the Order on 8 December last year, the move notified in the Commonwealth Gazette as required by law. Under the Australian honours system, members of the order can resign by notifying the governor general in writing.
The public resignation notice does not include any reason for his decision.
A spokesperson for the Council for the Order of Australia declined to say why Keelty had resigned.
“The council for the Order does not comment on individuals,” they said.
Attempts to contact Keelty for comment were unsuccessful. He retains the Australian Police Medal he was awarded in 1996 for distinguished service to policing.
Keelty has acknowledged previously he told Roberts-Smith in 2018 that police had received referrals about him which could lead to a war crimes investigation.
On 8 June 2018, the Nine newspapers began publishing a series of reports alleging that an unnamed Australian special forces soldier had been involved in the murder of unarmed civilians while on operations in Afghanistan, in breach of the laws of armed conflict. The soldier was later identified as the Victoria Cross recipient Roberts-Smith.
Keelty met Roberts-Smith on 15 June and again on 20 June. The meetings were first revealed in the Nine papers in August 2020.
In a statement to the Nine journalists Chris Masters and Nick McKenzie, Keelty said he did not know the former soldier at the time but contacted him at the request of someone in the security industry who had worked alongside Roberts-Smith at Seven Group Holdings, where he forged a civilian career after retiring from the army.
He said he had sought information from serving officers only to “de-conflict” with his former agency and avoid compromising any active inquiries.
In 2018 Roberts-Smith brought defamation proceedings against Masters, McKenzie and David Wroe, and their publisher, Nine Publishing, over the reports alleging war crimes.
The journalists relied on a defence of truth, requiring them to prove that on the balance of probabilities – the test in civil court proceedings – what they wrote about Roberts-Smith was substantially true.
In June last year, Judge Anthony Besanko found they had met the required level of proof that Roberts-Smith was involved in the murders of four unarmed civilians while serving in Afghanistan.
Besanko found that Keelty told Roberts-Smith at the 20 June meeting he could not meet him again because police had received “referrals” about him, and that Roberts-Smith actively tried to avoid police detection after Keelty told him about the referrals.
The court heard that Roberts-Smith obtained burner phones and began using encrypted communication apps on them about two weeks after receiving the information. Besanko found Roberts-Smith lied when he denied knowing about the referrals before buying the phones. He also found he lied about trying to evade police detection.
Roberts-Smith is appealing against the judgment.
