Ben Roberts-Smith arrested in Sydney to influence jury selection: SAS veteran’s stunning claim

Ben Roberts-Smith was arrested at Sydney Airport because prosecutors want him judged by a jury drawn from Australia’s largest city rather than his home state of WA or current home of Queensland, where he might have more support, says a former SAS colleague.

The ex-member of the unit’s now-disbanded Second Squadron, who asked not to be identified, said he and other veterans were shocked by what appeared to be an orchestrated plan by the Australian Federal Police and Office of the Special Investigator to maximise media coverage of the arrest last Tuesday.

The media outlet unsuccessfully sued for defamation by the famous soldier, Nine, appears to have been given a day’s notice of the arrest, which was conducted in public despite an offer by Mr Roberts-Smith’s lawyers to surrender himself for arrest at “anywhere, any time,” according to one of his advisers.

The AFP posted video footage of the arrest online for anyone to access, blurring Mr Roberts-Smith’s face even though he is one of Australia’s most-famous men. The police are expected to oppose his application for bail on Friday, potentially leaving him in jail for years while waiting for his trial.

“What’s concerned most of the blokes is the spectacle of it all,” the SAS veteran, who fought in the 2010 battle for which Mr Roberts-Smith was awarded the Victoria Cross, said on Monday. “A big public display of the arrest at Sydney airport — it’s essentially an ambush. That’s what you’ld call it.

“If they can do that to a private citizen then where’s the chance of fair trial when you’re already setting the stage for a pre-conceived outcome? That is probably the most concerning thing of all.”

Police forces often provide information to journalists about investigations, although the AFP has received heavy criticism for the way it conducted the arrest. An AFP spokesperson said “investigators made the arrest at the most appropriate time and location for operational needs”.

Split regiment

Mr Roberts-Smith has been accused of shooting, or ordering others to shoot five prisoners and civilians between 2009 and 2012 in Australia’s longest war.

He remains in a Sydney jail awaiting a bail hearing at Sydney’s Downing Centre that his lawyers expect will be opposed by a police prosecutor or lawyer. If released, he is likely to be prohibited from any contact with Australian or foreign military personnel who served with him in Afghanistan, where he led a six-man team hunting down Taliban leaders.

While the communications ban would be designed to prevent him colluding with potential witnesses, it mean he faces years of no contact with his closest friends.

With limited or no access to Afghan witnesses, forensic evidence or even bodies, the prosecution is expected to rely on the testimony of other SAS soldiers who have already accused Mr Roberts-Smith of murder.

Although their names have never been published, their identities are known among SAS veterans, who are split over the charges, which will be heard in a civilian court rather than a court martial under Australia’s agreement to participate in the International Criminal Court.

One of Mr Roberts-Smith’s SAS opponents appeared on 60 Minutes Sunday evening wearing a bandanna across his face and had his words read by an actor. He said the killings did not happen during combat or what is known as the “fog of war”.

“I don’t think any Australian would want our soldiers, our ADF, going overseas and committing murder essentially in their name,” he said.

‘State of shock’

Among Mr Roberts-Smith’s defenders is Hugh Poate, whose 23-year-old son Private Robert Poate was killed by an Afghan government solider in 2012. Two other Australians were killed too.

Then a corporal, Mr Roberts-Smith was hunting for their killer 13 days later in the village of Darwan when he allegedly kicked an Afghan farmer off an embankment and ordered him executed.

“I think everybody is in a state of shock,” Mr Poate said Monday. “I think its disgraceful to think the country he put his life on the line for, and awarded him the highest honour for bravery, has treated him in such a disrespectful manner.

“There was this public spectacle. They would have known he was on the plane with his twin daughters and his partner. Imagine what impact that will have on those two girls. They will never forget. I will never forget or forgive.”

A former chief executive of Chris O’Brien Lifehouse, a Sydney cancer treatment centre, said the veteran did not deserve sympathy.

“I am getting very tired of those who feel Ben Roberts Smith is being hard done by,” Timothy Dugan wrote on LinkedIn. “He was not named by the media, he named himself by launching a defamation claim. He lost. He lost the appeal on the basis of a truth.”

Mr Roberts-Smith was named in The Age and two other Nine newspapers on July, 2018, as the target of a war crimes investigation. He sued the papers and authors in 2019 for defamation.

‘Lives disrupted’

Mr Roberts-Smith and fellow SAS veteran Oliver Shultz have been charged with murder after a decade of investigations that will have cost $318 million by the end of this financial year, according to Budget papers.

The OSI, which was established to pursue former SAS soldiers, recently said it had narrowed the number of investigations from 53 to 13. It refuses to disclose how many people remain under investigation.

The SAS veteran said the agency did not tell veterans they were no longer targets, except in a few exceptional circumstances.

“People have been fired from jobs,” he said. “Their homes have been raided. Phones bugged. Their lives disrupted. They have lost employment opportunities.

“Their children have grown up in a period where they have heard their fathers referred to as a criminal. They are are still walking around the world wondering if the AFP is going to come in the middle of the night and arrest them.”

The OSI has told veterans than can ask whether they are under investigation.