An SAS soldier claims he watched Ben Roberts-Smith machine gun a captive Afghan minutes after ordering a squadmate to kill another Afghan at point blank range.
Mr Roberts-Smith alleges he was falsely accused of war crimes by Nine newspapers and its journalists when they said he was involved in six killings in Afghanistan.
Nine stands by its articles claiming the former SAS Captain either killed or ordered the killing of Afghans who had been detained through various missions.
After six months of delays Nine’s barrister, Nicholas Owens SC, finally opened his case by calling an unnamed SAS soldier known only as Person 41.
Person 41 told the court he joined the Australian Army in 1998, deployed to East Timor with Australian troops in 1999 and then later joined the SAS.
He was deployed four more times and remains in the SAS.
Nine spent the morning examining Person 41 about a raid on a Taxjmtzywliban compound codenamed Whiskey 108 in 2009.
Mr Roberts-Smith was part of the SAS assault on Whiskey 108 where multiple suspected Taliban fighters were killed.
Person 41 told the court he had entered a room in Whiskey 108 that was being used to store improvised explosive device parts and opium before he heard a “commotion” coming from a nearby courtyard.
Person 41 told the court on Wednesday that he walked into the courtyard and saw Mr Roberts-Smith and another SAS soldier, Person 4, standing near an older Afghan male.
The Afghan male was squatting at a wall near a tunnel entrance, Person 41 told the court.
Person 41 told the court Mr Roberts-Smith and Person 4 approached him and asked for the suppressor off his M4 assault rifle – a piece of equipment used to deaden the sound of the SAS guns.
“I removed (my suppressor) and handed it to Person 4 thinking he must need it to go into the tunnel and the suppressor would have muffled the loud noise if he had to use his rifle,” Person 41 told the court on Wednesday.
“He turned around, fitting it to his M4 rifle and they started walking to the wall where this male was squatting. I thought I think I know what’s going to happen here.”
Person 41 told the court he watched Mr Roberts-Smith grab the Afghan by the scruff of his shirt and walked him over to Person 4.
“(Mr Roberts-Smith) then kicked him in the back of the legs behind the knees until he was kneeling down… (Mr Roberts-Smith) pointed to the Afghan and said to Person 4 ‘shoot him’,” Person 41 told the court.
Person 41 said he didn’t want to see what happened next so he stepped back into the room and, a second later, claims he heard a suppressed M4 gunshot.
Person 41 told the court he wanted to “stay out of what just happened” and about 15 seconds later walked back into the courtyard where only Person 4 was standing over the dead Afghan.
“I walked up to Person 4. I don’t believe anything was said, he removed the suppressor from his rifle and gave it back to me, it was still warm,” Person 41 said.
“(The Afghan) had been shot once in the head and the Afghan was dead on the ground, quite a bit of blood flowing out of his head wound.”
Person 41 said it appeared Person 4 was in shock and they continued on with the mission.
Person 41 told the court he was standing outside the Whiskey 108 compound when he spotted Mr Roberts-Smith “frogmarching” another Afghan about five metres away.
The SAS soldier said Mr Roberts-Smith was carrying a machine gun in his arm and threw the Afghan to the ground.
“(Mr Roberts-Smith) reached down and grabbed him by shoulder, flipped him onto his stomach and lowered his machine gun to shoot approximately 3-5 rounds into the back of the Afghan male,” Person 41 said.
“After he’d done that he looked up and saw me standing there and said ‘we all cool, we good?’”
“I said ‘yeah mate no worries’.”
Mr Roberts-Smith then left the courtyard, Person 41 said.
Person 41 told the court he just wanted to “tow the line”.
“It’s the unwritten rule that you just go along with whatever happens,” he told the court.
Mr Roberts-Smith took the stand in mid-2021 to emphatically reject Nine’s version of the Whiskey 108 killing and every other killing alleged by the newspapers.
He said he had shot people at Whiskey 108, including a fighter with a prosthetic leg, but that man had been armed with a rifle and was moving quickly outside the base.
The court previously heard that the prosthetic leg was taken back to the SAS base as a trophy and used as a “drinking vessel” in boozy parties.
Mr Roberts-Smith said he never drank from the leg.
At times the former elite soldier broke down in tears recalling the horrors of the war in Afghanistan.
NSW, at that stage, was in the infancy of its Covid-19 Delta outbreak and the spiralling cases forced the trial to adjourn until it became safe for the dozens of lawyers, witnesses, journalists and spectators to sit in Justice Anthony Besanko’s Federal Court.
The trial temporarily resumed to hear from Afghan villagers who gave evidence, via videolink from Afghanistan, before the trial adjourned yet again.
Justice Besanko, on Wednesday morning, re-opened the trial noting that about six months had passed since the trial had sat.
Nine’s case is expected to last at least a month with more than a dozen witnesses who can travel to Sydney.
It’s unclear whether nine or 10 more SAS witnesses, who live in Western Australia, will be able to give evidence due to the state’s draconian border closures.
