Accused war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith has told a court it was “more than reasonable” for him to assume an unarmed Afghan man was a hostile insurgent because he saw another soldier shoot at the man first.
Ben Roberts-Smith used burner phones to call SAS colleagues after growing fearful that members of the media were listening into his phone calls after a series of articles were published in 2018 that accused him of war crimes and domestic violence, a court has heard.
Former SAS soldier Ben Roberts-Smith has told a court that he hired a private investigator to find out whether a woman who has accused him of domestic violence had an abortion and to obtain the home addresses of six SAS soldiers set to give evidence in his defamation trial.
War veteran Ben Roberts-Smith has said that while he was proud to have received the Victoria Cross for his actions at the 2010 battle of Tizak in Afghanistan, winning the award “put a target” on his back, with fellow soldiers seeking to undermine those they saw as tall poppies.
SAS soldier Ben Roberts-Smith has lost a bid to shield his medical records from three publishers less than a week before his high-profile defamation case kicks off in the Federal Court.
A judge has thrown out a legal challenge to the Morrison government’s ban on Australians travelling overseas during COVID-19, saying that Parliament had intended to permit the government to take such “harsh” measures that may “intrude on individual rights” in an emergency.
War veteran Ben Roberts-Smith is seeking all “covert recordings” held by Nine and revealed in a number of news publications last month in which the former soldier said it was his “sole mission” to destroy the journalists behind allegedly defamatory articles accusing him of war crimes.
A group of unsecured creditors of ‘Diamond Joe’ Gutnik’s mining firm Merlin Diamonds has launched a NSW Supreme Court bid to preserve their rights over security interests in the company as the clock ticks down to its impending liquidation.