By Graham Hryce | RT | June 2, 2023

Yesterday Justice Anthony Besanko handed down his ruling in Afghanistan war hero Ben Roberts-Smiths defamation case in the Federal Court in Sydney.

Justice Besanko released a summary of the judgment, agreeing to delay releasing his full reasons until next week, so that it could be vetted by the federal government to ensure that it did not contain any sensitive national security material.

Justice Besanko dismissed Roberts-Smiths case against Australian media on the basis that the most serious defamatory allegations made by the press, namely that the soldier was a war criminal and murderer, were substantially true.

The trial dubbed the defamation case of the century  ran for over 100 days, and the legal costs are thought to exceed $15 million for each side. Roberts-Smith will now have to pay the costs of both parties. This was an absolutely disastrous result for the war hero or, perhaps more accurately, former war hero.

Roberts-Smith, an SAS soldier who won a Victoria Cross fighting in Afghanistan, sued The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Canberra Times, and three journalists, over articles published in 2018 alleging that he was a war criminal and complicit in the murder of six innocent Afghan civilians.

The newspapers and journalists raised a defense of truth, and Roberts-Smith and witnesses called by the defendants, including three Afghan villagers and some of Roberts-Smiths fellow soldiers, gave conflicting evidence about what happened on various combat missions involving Roberts-Smith in Afghanistan. The trial judge disbelieved Roberts-Smith and accepted the evidence of the witnesses called by the newspapers, which will make it very difficult for any appeal that may be brought by Roberts-Smith to succeed.

Roberts-Smiths comprehensive loss in his defamation action will have dire consequences for him personally, the Australian Defence Force (ADF), and the military top brass.

A judge, albeit in civil proceedings, has now effectively ruled that Roberts-Smith is a war criminal. Civil cases require a lower standard of proof than criminal ones, but in the circumstances, it appears inevitable that he will face criminal charges in respect to his conduct in Afghanistan and in accordance with the protracted inquiry process into Afghanistan war crimes established by the former Morrison government some years ago. Roberts-Smith will no doubt be stripped of his Victoria Cross and other medals.

Besankos branding of Roberts-Smith as a war criminal and murderer makes it virtually impossible now to credibly maintain that Australian soldiers did not commit war crimes in Afghanistan. After all, if Australias most decorated war hero in Afghanistan was mur...