Thursday, June 01, 2023



Australia's most-decorated war-criminal

Ben Roberts-Smith is apparently "Australia’s most decorated living soldier", having won a Victoria Cross for killing people in Afghanistan. But today, after a stupendous self-own defamation case, he's also been proven to be a war criminal who committed multiple murders:

Ben Roberts-Smith VC, Australia’s most decorated living soldier, has lost a defamation case in which he was accused of multiple murders of unarmed civilians in Afghanistan, a federal court judge has found.

Justice Anthony Besanko found that, on the balance of probabilities, Roberts-Smith kicked a handcuffed prisoner off a cliff in Darwan in 2012, before ordering a subordinate Australian soldier to shoot the injured man dead.

And in 2009, Roberts-Smith ordered the execution an elderly man found hiding in a tunnel in a bombed-out compound, as well as murdering a disabled man with a prosthetic leg during the same mission, using a para minimi machine gun.

It's only a civil finding rather than a criminal one, but it still raises the obvious question: when will this war criminal be prosecuted for his crimes? And when will he be stripped of his VC? Or is that now a medal Australia gives to murdering war criminals?