“The system has failed” at handling war crime allegations and it’s fallen to the media to do the job of government, MP Andrew Hastie has told the defamation trial of Ben Roberts-Smith.
Ben Roberts-Smith is suing Nine newspapers and journalists over a series of articles that allege he committed war crimes, including six killings, while in Afghanistan with the SAS.
The former elite soldier denies every claim and, over the last few days, has watched Federal MP Andrew Hastie testify against him in Sydney’s Federal Court.
Mr Hastie was a Captain in the SAS and served alongside Mr Roberts-Smith, briefly, in 2012.
Allegations against Mr Roberts-Smith were spreading like wildfire in the SAS regiment at that time, the court has heard, including that he had killed unarmed Afghans.
The court has also heard that multiple SAS operators were telling regiment commanders they had witnessed or heard about killings and bullying involving the famed Victoria Cross winner.
The Australian Defence Force opened an inquiry into rumours of special forces misconduct in May 2016 and, by 2018, at least some of the inquiry’s witnesses were speaking to Nine journalists Chris Masters and Nick McKenzie, the court has heard.
Mr Hastie spoke to the journalists in 2019, he told the court, but did not want to openly accuse Mr Roberts-Smith of wrongdoing.
“There were people attacking that inquiry in the public square… For it to be undermined, diminished and attacked was bad for our country,” he told Mr Roberts-Smith’s barrister, Arthur Moses SC.
“The reason these allegations came to light is the system, thus far, has failed Mr Moses,” he said.
“When a system fails sometimes it’s up to the fourth estate to do the job.”
Nine claims Mr Roberts-Smith ordered another SAS soldier, codenamed Person 66, to execute an unarmed Afghan during a 2012 raid in Syahchow.
They further claim the SAS planted a weapon on the executed Afghan to make the killing appear legal within the rules of war.
Mr Roberts-Smith denies that.
Mr Hastie was at Syahchow that day and told the court he saw a dead body with an AK-47 assault rifle and saw Person 66 looking uncharacteristically uneasy.
The MP claims Mr Roberts-Smith later walked past and said “just a couple more dead c***s”.
Mr Hastie’s observations, along with what he had heard and been told over the years, formed a “mosaic” in his mind that Mr Roberts-Smith had committed a war crime killing at Syahchow, he told the court.
Under heated cross-examination he denied claims he was making up Mr Roberts-Smith’s comment.
Mr Hastie, earlier, told the court he had “dreams” about Mr Roberts-Smith in which they had killed an Australian troop and “covered it up”.
The MP said he believed the dream was a metaphor for a “deep truth” about “what we had done to ourselves” in Afghanistan.
Mr Hastie repeatedly, in his evidence, brought up what he thought was the moral issues around the war crime allegations.
“If we don’t insist on battlefield conduct being of a high standard for the ADF, on what basis can we condemn any other conduct around the world?” Mr Hastie said.
The trial continues.
