Australia’s most decorated soldier is charged with war crimes

Ben Roberts-Smith, once celebrated as Australia’s most decorated living soldier, has been arrested and accused of war crimes over the alleged killings of unarmed civilians during deployments to Afghanistan.

Police said the 47-year-old former Australian Defence Force member was taken into custody at Sydney Airport.

Court records identified the man as Ben Roberts-Smith.

Australian Federal Police said he was charged with five counts of war crimes tied to the murder of five people in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

“It will be alleged the victims were detained, unarmed and were under the control of ADF members when they were killed.”

Police will further allege that the victims were either shot by the accused or killed by subordinates acting on his orders and in his presence, she said.

The AFP said he was refused bail and would appear in court for a bail hearing tomorrow.

Mr Roberts-Smith was long held up as a national hero, receiving some of the country’s highest military honours, including the Victoria Cross, for actions across six tours of Afghanistan between 2006 and 2012.

He has repeatedly denied wrongdoing during his service, including claims first detailed by Nine Entertainment newspapers in a series of reports beginning in 2018.

Those reports included allegations that he shot an unarmed Afghan teenager dead and kicked a handcuffed man off a cliff before ordering that he be shot.

Mr Roberts-Smith, a former member of Australia’s Special Air Service Regiment (SAS), failed in his attempt to overturn the reporting in what became Australia’s most expensive defamation trial. In 2023, a Federal Court judge found the newspapers had proven four of the six murder allegations they advanced.

A final bid to appeal was rejected by the High Court in September 2025.

A 2020 report concluded there was credible evidence that members of Australia’s SAS killed dozens of unarmed prisoners during the long-running war in Afghanistan.

A federal police investigation into the SAS soldier, alongside a probe by the Office of the Special Investigator established to examine alleged war crimes by ADF members in Afghanistan, began in 2021.

Ross Barnett, the OSI’s director of investigations, said the work had been slow and complex because authorities could not travel to Afghanistan to inspect the alleged crime scenes.

“We don’t have access to the crime scenes, we don’t have photographs, site plans, measurements, the recovery of projectiles, blood-spatter analysis, all of those things we would normally get at a crime ⁠scene,” he said at the press conference.

The joint OSI-AFP has conducted 53 investigations into alleged war crimes by ADF members in Afghanistan, with ten still under way. The OSI said another former special forces soldier is scheduled to stand trial next February on a war crime murder charge.

“If the evidence leads to other people needing to be charged, you can be assured that will happen,” Mr Barnett added.

Amnesty International described Mr Roberts-Smith’s arrest as a “critical step toward global justice and accountability efforts”.

“Australian authorities must now ensure all credible allegations are fully investigated and, where appropriate, prosecuted,” said Zaki Haidari, Amnesty International Australia strategic campaigner.

Police footage showed officers meeting Mr Roberts-Smith as his flight landed at Sydney Airport before escorting him across the tarmac to a waiting police car.