2006: SAS Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith is deployed to Afghanistan for the first of six tours, which will see him return in 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2012.
Easter Sunday, 2009: Ben Roberts-Smith shoots a man with a prosthetic leg at the Taliban base dubbed Whiskey 108. The leg is ‘souvenired’ back to the Australian soldiers’ base, where it is used as a drinking vessel in the unofficial bar, the Fat Ladies’ Arms. Fairfax will later claim this man was an innocent villager and that Roberts-Smith also directed a ‘rookie’ soldier to kill a second man at Whiskey 108 as a form of ‘blooding’ or initiation.
11 June 2010: On an operation hunting for a senior Taliban commander in Tizak, in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, Roberts-Smith leads an assault against an enemy fortification and engages an insurgent, exposing his own position to draw fire away from members of his patrol who were pinned down. With total disregard for his own safety, he storms the enemy position, killing the two remaining machine gunners, allowing the assault team to gain the initiative.
23 January, 2011: Australian Governor-General Quentin Bryce presents Roberts-Smith his Victoria Cross medal for the Tizak operation in Perth.
11 September, 2012: In a southern Afghanistan village called Darwan, Roberts-Smith and other SAS soldiers look for an Afghan government soldier called Hekmatullah who had killed three Australian soldiers at an army base 13 days earlier. It would later be alleged by Nine newspapers that Roberts-Smith was the Australian soldier who kicked a man, Ali Jan, off a small cliff in Darwan and ordered an Afghan soldier to kill him.
2013: Roberts-Smith leaves the Australian Army. He is named Australian Father of the Year, begins studying for an MBA, and will join the Seven network as managing director, Queensland.
26 January 2014: Roberts-Smith is awarded the Commendation for Distinguished Service as part of the Australia Day honours, and is appointed chair of the Australia Day Council.
2016: The Department of Defence commissions the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force (IGADF) Afghanistan Inquiry, known as the Brereton Report, into allegations about possible breaches of the Law of Armed Conflict by members of the Special Operations Task Group in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2016.
June – August, 2018: Journalists Nick McKenzie, Chris Masters and David Wroe publish articles about a ‘warrior’ soldier they call Leonidas, and later identify as Ben Roberts-Smith. They claim he unlawfully killed innocent people in Afghanistan, including that he ‘murdered an unarmed and defenceless Afghan civilian’, that he bullied other soldiers, and that he punched a woman he was engaged in an extra-marital affair with in the face in 2018.
August, 2018: Roberts-Smith files defamation proceedings against Fairfax Media in the Federal Court. The 129-page lawsuit seeking aggravated damages, interest and costs claims he ‘has been greatly injured and his business, personal and professional reputation has been and will be brought into public disrepute, odium, ridicule and contempt’ by articles containing ‘false statements concerning his war service and personal life’.
October, 2018: Fairfax Media/Nine Newspapers files a truth defence, alleging Roberts-Smith was involved in six unlawful killings in Afghanistan, contravening the Geneva Convention, as well as bullying two colleagues and assaulting the unnamed woman with whom he was having an affair.
June, 2021: After Nine drops one of its claims of an alleged ‘execution of an unarmed Afghan’ two weeks beforehand, the Federal Court defamation trial begins before Justice Anthony Besanko in Sydney. Roberts-Smith, 42, who says five killings happened lawfully in battle, is the first witness.
June, 2022: After Covid delays, and 41 witnesses including Roberts-Smith’s former SAS comrades, his ex-wife Emma Roberts and his former mistress, the marathon 110-day trial costing $25 million comes to an end.
1 June, 2023: Justice Besanko delivers his findings.
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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk