The soldier who discovered the infamous tunnel in Whiskey 108 says there were no fighting-aged males hiding inside, backing Ben Roberts-Smith’s version of events of a fiercely contested mission in Afghanistan, the federal court has heard.
Roberts-Smith’s fourth soldier witness, a still-serving warrant officer anonymised as Person 29, gave evidence on Wednesday about a 2009 SAS raid on a compound known as Whiskey 108 in the village of Kakarak – an insurgent redoubt in Afghanistan’s southern Uruzgan province.
Person 29, a former comrade of Roberts-Smith and godfather to one of his children, was the soldier who discovered the crude, hand-dug tunnel, underneath a grate and hidden beneath grass as troops were working to clear the compound of threats.
The tunnel, and what was in it, is critical to two murder allegations against Roberts-Smith made by the newspapers defending Roberts-Smith’s defamation claim.
Roberts-Smith, a recipient of the Victoria Cross, 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 any wrongdoing.
Person 29 said after he discovered the tunnel, Roberts-Smith’s offer to climb inside it was rejected because he was too tall. A smaller Australian soldier, Person 35, was sent down the tunnel to clear it. He removed his body armour and drew his pistol to crawl into the tiny space. It took about “30 seconds” to clear the tunnel, Person 29 told the court.
“Did any fighting-age males come out of the tunnel?” Roberts-Smith’s barrister, Arthur Moses SC, asked Person 29 on Wednesday.
“No,” he replied.
The discovery of the tunnel is not contested, but two irreconcilable versions of events have emerged in court about what was found inside. Roberts-Smith has repeatedly told the court the tunnel contained a cache of arms but no people.
Four times during his evidence to the court, Roberts-Smith told Justice Anthony Besanko “there were no men in the tunnel” or “there were no people in the tunnel”.
He has now been backed by three of his soldier witnesses.
But five other Australian SAS soldiers, called to give evidence by the newspapers, have told the court they saw men pulled from the tunnel.
A soldier known as Person 42 told the court the men “were compliant … they came out unarmed, they came out freely, relatively quickly once given commands – the ‘hands up’ order”.
The presence of those men, or otherwise, is key because of what is alleged to have happened next.
The newspapers claim the two men pulled from the tunnel were murdered: one, a disabled man with a prosthetic leg, was allegedly machine-gunned by Roberts-Smith himself, his leg later taken as a souvenir by another soldier as a ghoulish trophy of war, a drinking vessel for celebrating soldiers. The other person, an elderly man, was allegedly executed by another soldier on Roberts-Smith’s orders – a “blooding” of a new trooper.
Roberts-Smith denies either killing ever happened as alleged, and argues they could never have happened because there was never anybody in the tunnel.
He said he killed the man with a prosthetic leg, whom he discovered running and armed, outside the compound. The man was an insurgent, lawfully killed within the laws of war, Roberts-Smith says.
The elderly man, according to Roberts-Smith, was killed by another Australian soldier, unknown to him, but whom he credits with saving his life.
Person 29 remains in the witness box. The trial continues.
