An Australian court on Friday ordered the country’s most revered living war veteran, Ben Roberts-Smith, to be granted bail with travel restrictions.
The decision comes 10 days after he was charged with war crimes in the killing of five people while deployed in Afghanistan. Roberts-Smith has denied the allegations.
If found guilty, he faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
What did the judge say?
Judge Greg Grogin told a Sydney court that Roberts-Smith was entitled to the presumption of innocence if proven guilty.
He said the case was likely to take “years” to reach trial, creating exceptional circumstances that would justify granting bail. Roberts-Smith was also ordered to post A$250,000 (€150,000, $180,000) bail.
Prosecutors had opposed bail, arguing that Roberts-Smith could flee Australia or interfere with witnesses and evidence.
Opposing bail, prosecutor Simon Buchan described the charges against Roberts-Smith as “one of the most serious charges known in the criminal law”. Buchen said that when the war veteran learned of the possibility of facing charges he was “on the verge of being transferred abroad” without notifying authorities.
Police last week arrested and charged a 47-year-old man with five counts of war crimes over the alleged killing of five unarmed Afghan civilians in Uruzgan province between 2009 and 2012. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.
The charges follow a landmark military report released in 2020, which found evidence that elite SAS and commando troops unlawfully killed 39 Afghan prisoners, farmers and other non-combatants.
Roberts-Smith is accused of shooting two victims himself and ordering his subordinates to kill three others.
Roberts-Smith loses defamation case over war crimes allegations
In 2023, a civil court found similar allegations against Roberts-Smith credible, and rejected his claim that the newspaper reports had defamed him.
During that trial, he testified that he had never killed an unarmed Afghan and denied committing any war crimes. He said he was the victim of false accusations from fellow soldiers and jealousy over his military medals.
However, while the civil court found that the charges were mostly proven on the balance of probabilities, war crimes murder charges must be proven to a higher standard beyond reasonable doubt in the criminal court.
Australian law defines war crime murder as the intentional killing in the context of an armed conflict of someone who is not taking an active part in the hostilities, such as a civilian, a prisoner of war or a wounded soldier.
More than 39,000 Australian military personnel served in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021, as part of US and NATO-led operations against the Taliban.
Edited by: Rana Taha