An elite Australian soldier has told a court he heard Ben Roberts-Smith order the shooting of an unarmed Afghan man he was interrogating during a mission in Afghanistan in 2012.
Much of the testimony presented in the decorated war veteran’s defamation trial this week had centred on two alleged shootings committed during a raid on a compound in the village of Kakarak in April 2009.
But late on Friday, the federal court heard a former comrade of Roberts-Smith give evidence about another alleged shooting, in 2012.
The elite soldier told the court Roberts-Smith commanded a military interpreter to order an Afghan national army soldier kill an unarmed captive.
Roberts-Smith is suing the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Canberra Times for defamation over a series of reports he alleges are defamatory and portray him as committing war crimes, including murder. The newspapers are pleading a defence of truth. Roberts-Smith denies all wrongdoing.
On Friday, the court heard evidence from a still-serving SAS soldier, anonymised in evidence as Person 14, who served eight tours of Afghanistan in the SAS as well as three in Iraq and three in East Timor.
He told the court he was assigned to Roberts-Smith’s patrol on 12 October 2012, during a mission in Khas Uruzgan. The Australian soldiers conducted the mission alongside members of the Afghan national army.
As the mission was being concluded, and the helicopters to extract the Australian soldiers were en route from their Tarin Kowt base, Roberts-Smith was interrogating an Afghan male detained inside a compound, according to evidence from Person 14.
The male, who was not armed, was referred to as a “PUC”, an acronym for person under control. Evidence before the court said the man “was not exhibiting any signs of being a threat or violent”.
As Roberts-Smith conducted the interrogation, Person 14 said he was standing to the side of the compound when he noticed a discolouration on one of the mud walls: “It had been recently plastered with mud.”
“I thought, ‘oh, there’s a cache’.”
Person 14 kicked the discoloured area and a cache of weapons fell out, including rifles, ammunition, binoculars, and rocket-propelled grenades.
As Person 14 walked back towards the interrogation, Roberts-Smith turned towards the Australian forces’ interpreter.
Person 14 was standing behind the interpreter. Roberts-Smith pointed at the senior member of the Afghan national army who was on the raid with the Australians and then gestured towards the PUC.
Roberts-Smith said: “Tell him to shoot him or I will,” Person 14 told the court.
The interpreter initially refused to interpret the message, so Roberts-Smith repeated it: “Tell him to shoot him or I will.”
The interpreter passed on the message to the Afghan soldiers, and after some discussion between the interpreter and the Afghan soldiers, a member of the Afghan forces stepped forward towards the PUC.
“One of his soldiers … stepped out of the group of soldiers, trained his suppressed M4 [rifle] on the Afghan man and unloaded five to eight rounds into his centre of … mass … his torso,” Person 14 told the court.
Person 14 said as the unarmed Afghan fell, the soldier fired two more bullets into the man’s neck and head.
“I was perplexed but didn’t say anything. We were close to extraction,” Person 14 told the court.
In earlier evidence this week, another still-serving member of the SAS, anonymised as Person 41, told the court he had seen Roberts-Smith order a subordinate soldier to execute a captive, unarmed elderly man during a 2009 raid on the Whiskey 108 compound.
Person 41 said he also saw Roberts-Smith “frog-march” a man with a prosthetic leg outside the same compound before throwing him to the ground and machine-gunning him to death.
Person 14 gave evidence that he saw an Australian soldier shoot the man with the prosthetic leg with a machine gun in a similar fashion. He said he did not recognise Roberts-Smith at the time, in fading light, but later saw Roberts-Smith holding the uncommon weapon, a Minimi machine gun, used to kill the man, and recognised his distinctive camouflage face paint from the scene.
Under cross-examination, Person 14 said he had doubts about the awarding of the Victoria Cross to Roberts-Smith, but added he had a “good” working relationship with the decorated veteran.
The trial before Justice Anthony Besanko continues.
