Australia’s most decorated living soldier was arrested on Tuesday and will be charged with five counts of war crime murders relating to the killing of unarmed civilians while on deployment in Afghanistan.

The man, whom police identified as a 47-year-old former Australian Defence Force member and media named as Ben Roberts-Smith, was arrested at Sydney Airport on Tuesday morning.

He will be charged with five counts of war crimes in connection to the murder of five people in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012, Australian Federal Police (AFP) said. The maximum penalty for each charge is life imprisonment.

Among the accusations reported were that Roberts-Smith had shot dead an unarmed Afghan teenager and kicked a handcuffed man off a cliff before ordering him to be shot dead.

  • taygaloocat@leminal.space
    3·
    8 hours ago

    "Anthony Besanko found that Roberts-Smith had

    twice ordered unarmed men be shot dead to “blood” rookie soldiers, and was involved in the deaths of a handcuffed farmer he kicked off a cliff and a captured Taliban fighter whose prosthetic leg was taken as a trophy and later used by troops as a drinking vessel."

    The fact they’re looking into it at all is good news.

    Americans would just do the classic “we investigated ourselves and decided we did nothing wrong” and leave it at that.