Senior SAS officer contradicts previous witness in Ben Roberts-Smith defamation trial

Ben Roberts-Smith’s long-running defamation case against three Australian newspapers is drawing to a close with the final of 40 witnesses giving evidence. Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AAP

The most senior SAS officer called to give evidence by Ben Roberts-Smith in his defamation trial has contradicted another of Roberts-Smith’s key witnesses over the death of a man during a 2009 raid on an Afghan compound.

Person 81, a serving senior officer in the SAS and a 25-year veteran of the military, is the final of 40 witnesses called in Roberts-Smith’s year-long defamation trial.