A “heartbroken” SAS soldier has seized up in the witness box explaining why he chose to testify Ben Roberts-Smith performed an “exhibition execution” against a Taliban insurgent in an emotional court hearing.
Mr Roberts-Smith is suing Nine newspapers and journalists claiming they falsely defamed him when they accused him of war crimes in a series of articles from 2018.
Nine claims Mr Roberts-Smith killed six detained Afghans unlawfully – Mr Roberts-Smith denies every single claim insisting he only killed within the laws of engagement while deployed with the SAS.
Another former member of the elite regiment, known as Person 24, this week has testified against Mr Roberts-Smith in the Federal Court defamation lawsuit.
Person 24, on Tuesday, repeated claims he watched Mr Roberts-Smith march an insurgent out a door at a captured Taliban compound in 2009.
The discharged soldier said he watched Mr Roberts-Smith throw the Afghan to the ground and shot him in the back with a machine gun outside the compound code named Whiskey 108.
“I think it was an exhibition execution – he wanted everyone to see he was going to kill someone out there,” Person 24 told the court.
Mr Roberts-Smith, seated in the back of the Sydney court, shook his head while his barrister, Arthur Moses SC, said Person 24 was knowingly giving false evidence.
Mr Roberts-Smith told the court he shot dead the insurgent after the Taliban fighter ran around a corner armed with a rifle.
Person 24, under cross examination by Mr Moses, repeatedly appeared to choke up mid-sentence.
“I have found it extremely difficult to stomach…” the SAS soldier told the court, trailing off and breathing deeply.
“…Giving evidence against that man in the corner,” he said, referring to Mr Roberts-Smith.
Person 24 has partially defended Mr Roberts-Smith’s actions in Afghanistan saying he was simply killing “bad dudes” that the SAS had been sent to fight.
Person 24 told the court the man Mr Roberts-Smith executed was a mid-level Taliban bomb maker who had previously been a target for the SAS.
The soldier told the court it was hilarious that the SAS pilfered the bomber’s prosthetic leg and turned it into a macabre beer drinking vessel back at the Australian base.
He has also told the court he disapproved of other soldiers who were waging a concerted, decade-long media battle to ruin Mr Roberts-Smith.
But, Person 24 told the court, he was testifying against Mr Roberts-Smith to back up his friends in the SAS whose lives had been destroyed by their time in the regiment.
Among the “good soldiers” he was hoping to support is an emotionally damaged veteran known as Person 4, the court heard.
Nine claims Mr Roberts-Smith implicated Person 4 in two war crime murders; the first was during the same Whiskey 108 raid.
Mr Roberts-Smith has flatly denied Nine’s claims he ordered, or silently permitted, Person 4 to execute a second captured Afghan so he could be “blooded” with his first kill.
“In my eyes Person 4 was a good soldier… He is a great person and to see how…” Person 24’s words caught in his throat.
“…(To see) how his life has been turned upside down by the time that he spent in the regiment and the people he spent it with…I find it heartbreaking, Mr Moses.”
Mr Moses suggested Person 24 had come to court to “tell stories” that supported his mates – and the allegations were false.
Person 24 told the court that an SAS patrol commander had turned up at the troop’s barracks one week before the Whiskey 108 raid and did a jig before saying they were going to “blood the rookie”.
“I now understand that when (the patrol commander) came to our room it was said with malicious intent. It was a premeditated act,” Person 24 said.
“(The patrol commander) came to our room, he uttered those words and post the patrol I was made aware Person 4 had been ordered to shoot someone.”
Person 4, in his evidence earlier this month, refused to answer questions about Whiskey 108 citing fears of “self-incrimination” and prosecution in foreign courts.
Instead Person 4 did a “side-deal” with Nine that he would only have to testify about a raid in 2012 on the village of Darwan.
Person 4 claimed he saw Mr Roberts-Smith kick an unarmed Afghan farmer down a cliff during that raid.
It is a claim wholly denied by Mr Roberts-Smith who says he shot dead a Taliban spotter carrying a radio on that day.
The trial continues.
