Ben Roberts-Smith routinely burned laptops to destroy their hard drives and protect his private information, he has told his defamation trial against Nine Newspapers.
Australia’s most decorated soldier was giving evidence in the Federal Court where he denied the newspapers’ claims he had attempted to cover up war crimes.
Mr Roberts-Smith was asked if he had destroyed a laptop by fire in June 2018 about the time the media company first published allegations he had been involved in six murders in Afghanistan.
The Victoria Cross recipient said he always destroyed laptops if he was not going to trade them in so that data, documents and photographs could not be extracted from the hard drives.
He said he had poured petrol on laptops and set them alight for that reason in 2010 and 2012 when at his parents’ Queensland property with his family.
Ben Roberts-Smith routinely burned laptops to destroy their hard drives and protect his private information, he has told his defamation trial against Nine Newspapers. He was accused by Nine of murdering six Afghan men which he has vehemently denied
During his fifth tour of duty in Afghanistan, Mr Roberts-Smith (pictured) drew enemy fire away from pinned-down members of his patrol, stormed two enemy machine-gun posts and silenced them. He was awarded a Victoria Cross for his heroism. This picture was taken about an hour and a half after the battle
The 42-year-old gave another insight into his security-conscious behaviour when he said he never spoke to anyone, including family and friends, on a standard phone line.
‘I used encrypted apps to talk to everybody,’ he said.
Mr Roberts-Smith also denied trying to set up one of his ‘enemies’ in the SAS Regiment by claiming he had smuggled guns back to Australia from Afghanistan.
Nicholas Owens SC for Nine put it to Mr Roberts-Smith that he had attempted to intimidate fellow soldiers to prevent them speaking to the media or an inquiry by the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force.
Mr Roberts-Smith denied every suggestion he had ever done that. He said he had only ever wanted to find out who was spreading rumours about his war service and what they were saying about him.
He said he had told private investigator John McLeod that one of the soldiers he believed to be part of a ‘whispering campaign’ against him had illegally smuggled unregistered guns back from Afghanistan.
Mr Roberts-Smith’s ex-wife Emma has ‘flipped’ and is giving evidence for Nine Entertainment. The former couple is pictured together at a reception to celebrate military and civilian heroes in London in 2012
That soldier, known as Person 6 in the hearing, had complained in 2014 about a commendation Mr Roberts-Smith received and the pair did not like each other.
Mr Roberts-Smith said he gave Mr McLeod a document alleging Person 6 had imported unregistered firearms in 2012 and that Mr McLeod had told him he had contacts in the Australian Federal Police.
In October 2017 then AFP commissioner Andrew Colvin and then federal senator Nick Xenophon had received emails containing those allegations but Mr Roberts-Smith denied he had told Mr McLeod to contact them.
‘He said he was going to talk to his friends about it and I said “If you’d like to do that, you can go out and do it”,’ Mr Roberts-Smith told the court.
The gun allegations were published in The Australian and subsequently Western Australian police raided Person 6’s Perth home but no firearms were found.
Mr Owens put it to Mr Roberts-Smith that he wanted to discredit Person 6 and sought to set him up with false allegations because he held a grudge against his onetime comrade.
‘I didn’t have a grudge,’ Mr Roberts-Smith said. ‘I was trying to make it clear this individual was not to be trusted.’
Mr Roberts-Smith denied using Mr McLeod to send threatening letters to another former soldier, Person 18, who he also believed to be talking to the media about him.
Person 18 had received a letter which began, ‘You and others have worked together to spread lies and rumours to the media and the IGADF inquiry.’
Ben Roberts-Smith’s Victoria Cross made him the most famous soldier in Australia but also allegedly led to jealousy among some of his colleagues. The Queen is pictured shaking hands with him during an audience at Buckingham Palace in November 2011
‘We are aware of your murderous actions over many tours of Afghanistan… You know what you have done and so do we.
‘Approach the Inquiry and admit to working with others to concoct lies about other SAS members. You have until the end of the month to tell them the truth.
‘And don’t forget this, because it will not go away. You will go down. Better to take a reprimand than murder charges.’
Mr Owens put it to Mr Roberts-Smith that when a newspaper article described ‘mafia-style’ threats made to Person 18 his then wife Emma had confronted him about it.
Mr Roberts-Smith denied his wife had said to him, ‘What the f*** are you doing? What is this all about?’ and ‘No more f***king lies, Ben’.
He denied he said, ‘I sent a letter to Person 18’, that he used gloves when handling the document and had it printed at Channel 7 where he worked.
The court was closed to the public and media on Tuesday while evidence considered to involve matters of national security was heard.
On Monday, Mr Roberts-Smith denied shooting dead an unarmed Afghan with a prosthetic leg after ordering a junior SAS member to skill a second prisoner in a ‘blooding’ custom.
Mr Roberts-Smith has told the court he shot dead an Afghan man outside a Taliban compound known as Whiskey 108 at Kakarak in southern Afghanistan on Easter Sunday in April 2009.
Mr Roberts-Smith has said his soul was crushed by allegations he punched a woman in the face and committed war crimes. He is pictured with his new girlfriend Sarah Matulin attending the Magic Millions races together on the Queensland Gold Coast in January this year
He later discovered that man had a prosthetic leg. In the same engagement, another SAS soldier had shot dead a second insurgent.
Mr Owens put it to Mr Roberts-Smith on Monday that both Afghan men were in fact found in a tunnel in the compound and taken prisoner after surrendering.
Mr Owens said a solder called Person 5 had told a soldier called Person 4 to shoot one of the prisoners, an old man wearing a white robe. ‘That’s completely false,’ Mr Roberts-Smith responded.
Mr Owens said Mr Roberts-Smith or Person 4 had asked to borrow a suppressor to silence one of their weapons from a soldier called Person 41.
Mr Roberts-Smith was awarded the Victoria Cross for selfless actions in Afghanistan and is fighting for his reputation in the Federal Court, claiming his reputation was destroyed by media giant Nine Entertainment
Ben Roberts-Smith (second from left) pictured with his SAS regiment in Afghanistan where he was awarded the Victoria Cross for his heroism in a battle in Tizak, Kandahar Province
He claimed Mr Roberts-Smith forced the old man to the ground and told Person 4, ‘Shoot him’. Mr Roberts-Smith denied all of it. ‘That is completely false.’
Mr Owens put it to Mr Roberts-Smith that he then carried the prisoner with the prosthetic leg out of the compound, threw him on the ground and shot him with an extended burst from his machine gun.
He put to Mr Roberts-Smith that when he realised Person 4 had seen the execution he asked him, ‘Are we cool?’ Mr Roberts-Smith replied: ‘No, that’s a lie.’
Mr Roberts-Smith has told the court that two insurgents, including the man with the prosthetic leg, were shot dead in legitimate engagements during the mission.
The man with the prosthetic leg had been armed with a bolt-action rifle and the other with a machine gun. He said no Afghans were found in a tunnel or taken prisoner and Person 5 had not discussed ‘blooding rookies’.
‘I’m feeling good mate, looking forward to finally setting the record straight,’ Mr Roberts-Smith told Daily Mail Australia ahead of the hearing
Australian special forces soldiers are pictured boarded a Chinook helicopter at the airfield at their base in Tarin Kowt
The trial has heard that a soldier known as Person 6 who was one of Mr Roberts-Smith’s ‘enemies’, souvenired the leg as a war trophy.
The leg was kept at the SAS base and used as a drinking vessel at the regiment’s unofficial bar, the Fat Lady’s Arms.
Mr Roberts-Smith has always denied having drunk from the hollow limb but said on Monday he had cheered with other soldiers when they had done so. It was an accepted part of the SAS culture and he had encouraged it.
Mr Roberts-Smith said he owned two glasses shaped like the prosthetic leg which had been given to members of his squadron and engraved with its number.
Nine newspapers published a series of stories in 2018 accusing Mr Roberts-Smith of war crimes including involvement in the murders of six unarmed prisoners.
The Victoria Cross recipient has rejected every allegation put to him and said he only ever fought with honour, within the rules of engagement in Afghanistan.
All the Nine murder allegations relate to claims the former SAS soldier killed, or ordered to be killed, insurgents already in custody.
Many of Mr Roberts-Smith’s SAS colleagues were pictured drinking from the leg in the Fat Lady’s Arms but he was not one of them
Mr Roberts-Smith has also denied claims of trying to interfere with investigations into his conduct and of bullying former colleagues.
He said on June 16 he had not buried USB sticks containing pictures of soldiers in Afghanistan in his Queensland backyard, as alleged by Nine.
And he has rejected a claim he punched a woman with whom he was having an affair in the face after a Parliament House function in March 2018. She is known as Person 17 in the hearing.
Mr Roberts-Smith alleges the newspapers and journalists Nick McKenzie, Chris Masters and David Wroe defamed him in what was then the Fairfax press in 2018.
Among his claims is that the publications wrongly made out that he ‘broke the moral and legal rules of military engagement and is therefore a criminal.’
Mr Roberts-Smith says the newspapers falsely implied his alleged conduct had disgraced his country and the army.
Nine Entertainment Co, the media giant which now owns the Herald and Age, is defending their journalists’ claims on the basis the allegations are true.
The newspapers will plead that Mr Roberts-Smith was complicit in and responsible for the murders of the six Afghanis, and that those alleged actions constituted war crimes.
Mr McClintock said the effect of the newspaper stories had been to ‘smash and destroy’ Mr Roberts-Smith’s previously exalted reputation.
Mr Roberts-Smith shot dead a man with a prosthetic leg on a mission in 2009. The leg was souvenired by another soldier and taken back to the SAS base where it was used as a drinking vessel. Mr Roberts-Smith (pictured) has denied ever drinking from the leg
Mr Roberts-Smith would be seeking aggravated damages because according to Mr McClintock, the publisher knew some of their claims to be false.
The stories had been presented in a ‘sensational’ manner, included ‘unjustifiable allegations of murder’ and had not been withdrawn.
Mr McClintock said one false allegation Mr Roberts-Smith murdered an Afghani, which was recently withdrawn by Nine, should lead to aggravated damages being awarded.
‘I will put to Your Honour that a false allegation of murder, with no basis, justifies the largest award of aggravated damages ever in this country.’
The action on September 11, 2012 involved Mr Roberts-Smith swimming a river at Darwan in Uruzgan Province and shooting dead a mid-level insurgent armed with an AK-47-style assault rifle.
An SAS patrol had been hunting an Afghani called Hekmatullah who had shot dead three Australians at their Tarik Kowt base while they were playing cards.
Mr Roberts-Smith had swum the Helmand River, killed a target and rolled the man’s body to the edge of the water where he sat him up so he could be photographed.
He explained he had done that because he had shot off the top of the man’s head and he could not easily be identified.
‘Just to put it bluntly, he didn’t have a face,’ Mr Roberts-Smith told the court.
Mr Roberts-Smith said it was ‘particularly disgusting Nine had maintained he murdered the man, who was not Hekmatullah,
The parents of Mr Roberts-Smith, Len and Sue Roberts-Smith have attended each day of the trial in the Federal Court, after claiming the allegations against their son ruined their lives
‘You would think that people would be proud of someone who’s prepared to do that, in the sense that you risk your own life to try and catch somebody who had just killed three of our people,’ he told the court.
Mr Roberts-Smith has denied another Nine claim that later on the same mission he had kicked a shepherd called Ali Jan off a 10m cliff at Darwan and ordered him to be shot.
He said there was no such an incident had taken place and he could not understand how ‘a fanciful story like that’ could be believed, let alone published in a newspaper.
Nine alleges that Mr Roberts-Smith and members of his patrol detained three Afghan males near the end of the a mission at Darwan.
One of the detainees was allegedly a shepherd named Ali Jan and the other two are known in the hearing as Person 62 and Person 63. Nine says the three were handcuffed and questioned.
The newspapers claim Mr Roberts-Smith forced Ali Jan to kneel at the edge of a cliff while still handcuffed and then took a number of steps back before kicking him hard in the midriff.
According to Nine, Ali Jan fell over the cliff and landed in a dry creek bed below. The impact of the fall was so great it knocked Ali Jan’s teeth out of his mouth.
Nine alleges Ali Jan was moved by two soldiers to the other side of the creek bed where he was shot dead by Mr Roberts-Smith or another SAS member called Person 11, or both.
Mr Roberts-Smith has given evidence that no such incident ever took place and disputed there was even a drop he would consider a cliff at Darwan.
Shown a picture of a steep incline of 7 to 10m in the area, Mr Roberts-Smith said, ‘A cliff is a cliff – and that’s not a cliff to me.’
Instead of having executed a shepherd, Mr Roberts-Smith said he was nearby when Person 11 engaged and killed a Taliban spotter in a cornfield near the end of the mission.
But Mr Owens, for Nine, said Mr Roberts-Smith and others had moved Ali Jan’s body into the cornfield and planted a radio on him as part of a cover-up.
Photographs of the body in the cornfield shown to Mr Roberts-Smith allegedly showed much of the dead man’s arms were covered in blood except for a strip near his wrist.
‘Do you agree [the unbloodied skin] is consistent with him wearing flexicuffs on the wrists when he was bleeding?’ Mr Owens asked.
Mr Roberts-Smith said it was not. He estimated there was about ten minutes between the completion of the Darwan mission and his patrol’s scheduled extraction by helicopter.
Mr Owens put it to Mr Roberts-Smith there was a window of more than an hour in which Ali Jan could have been killed.
Mr McClintock has also referred to the capture of three Afghan men and a teenager who were travelling in a Toyota Hilux at Fazel in November 2012. The youth was allegedly ‘shaking like a leaf’ during the encounter.
Australia’s most decorated soldier Ben Roberts-Smith is suing three newspapers and three journalists he says destroyed his reputation as a war hero. Mr Roberts-Smith is pictured on Wednesday arriving at the Federal Court
Nine claims Mr Roberts-Smith admitted murdering the boy in a conversation one or two days after the mission in a conversation with Person 16 who asked him, ‘What happened to the young bloke who was shaking like a leaf?’
Mr Roberts-Smith allegedly responded: ‘I shot the c*** in the head. [Person 15] told me not to kill any c*** on that job so I pulled out my 9mm and shot him in the head. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.’
Mr McClintock said that version of events was ‘absolutely ridiculous’.
‘It’s like Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now as Colonel Kilgore on ice,’ he said. ‘It’s insane. It’s the sort of thing that would be said by an ostentatious psychopath.’
Mr Roberts-Smith said he had never used his pistol on any mission in Afghanistan.
Defence documents would reveal the four males were intercepted by a patrol Mr Roberts-Smith was not on, the boy had been released and the three men were taken to the Australian base at Tarin Kowt.
Mr Roberts-Smith said Nine had originally claimed the Hilux interception took place in October when he was another mission in Shahir Usza in the northern part of Uruzgan for which he won a commendation.
Mr Roberts-Smith is also suing his ex-wife Emma Roberts, claiming she broke into his email account. She is pictured outside her Brisbane home on Friday
How Ben Roberts-Smith won his VC
Ben Roberts-Smith (pictured) joined the Army in 1996 and completed the Special Air Service selection course in 2003. He completed six tours of Afghanistan (2006-2012)
Barrister Bruce McClintock read this summary of Ben Roberts-Smith’s military service up to the battle in which he was awarded the Victoria Cross:
‘Corporal Benjamin Roberts-Smith enlisted in the Australian Regular Army in 1996. After completing the requisite courses, he was posted to the 3rd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment, where he saw active service in East Timor.
In January 2003, he successfully completed the Australian Special Air Service Regiment selection course. During his tenure with the regiment, he deployed on Operation Valiant, Slate, Slipper, Catalyst, and Slipper 2. Corporal Benjamin Roberts-Smith was awarded the Medal for Gallantry for his actions in Afghanistan in 2006.
On 11 June 2010, a troop of the Special Operations Task Group conducted a helicopter assault in Tizak, Kandahar Province, in order to capture or kill a senior Taliban commander. Immediately upon the helicopter insertion, the troop was engaged by machine gun and rocket-propelled grenade fire from multiple dominating positions. Two soldiers were wounded in action and the troop was pinned down by fire from three machine guns in an elevated, fortified position to the south of the village.
Under the cover of close air support, suppressive small arms and machine gun fire, Corporal Roberts-Smith and his patrol manoeuvred to within 70m of the enemy position in order to neutralise the enemy machine gun positions and regain the initiative. Upon commencement of the assault, the patrol drew very heavy, intense, effective and sustained fire from the enemy position. Corporal Roberts-Smith and his patrol members fought towards the enemy position until, at a range of 40m, the weight of fire prevented further movement forward.
At this point, he identified the opportunity to exploit some cover provided by a small structure. As he approached the structure, Corporal Roberts-Smith identified an insurgent grenadier in the throws of engaging his patrol. Corporal Roberts-Smith instinctively engaged the insurgent at point-blank range, resulting in the death of the insurgent.
With the members of his patrol still pinned down by the three machine gun positions, he exposed his own position in order to draw fire away from his patrol, which enabled them to bring fire against the enemy. His actions enabled his patrol commander to throw a grenade and silence one of the machine guns.
Seizing the advantage and demonstrating extreme devotion to duty and the most conspicuous gallantry, Corporal Roberts-Smith, with a total disregard for his own safety, stormed the enemy position, killing the two remaining machine gunners. His act of valour enabled his patrol to break into the enemy position and to lift the weight of fire from the remainder of the troop, who had been pinned down by the machine gun.
On seizing the fortified gun position, Corporal Roberts-Smith then took the initiative again and continued to assault enemy position in depth, during which he and another patrol member engaged and killed further enemy. His acts of selfless valour directly enabled his troop to go on and clear the village of Tizak of Taliban. This decisive engagement subsequently caused the remainder of the Taliban in the Shah Wali Kot district to retreat from the area.
Corporal Roberts-Smith’s most conspicuous gallantry in a circumstance of extreme peril was instrumental to the seizure of the initiative and the success of the troop against a numerically superior enemy force. His valour was an inspiration for the soldiers with whom he fought alongside and is in keeping with the finest traditions of the Australian Army and the Australian Defence Force.’