#Austrailian star crunch full#
#Austrailian star crunch trial#

#Austrailian star crunch trial#

Roberts-Smith had attended every day of his trial but did not appear at the Sydney court for the decision. “I know this will be particularly hard for Ben who has always maintained his innocence,” Stokes said.

Stokes has stood by Roberts-Smith, saying in a statement: “The judgment does not accord with the man I know.” The case's legal costs have been underwritten by billionaire Kerry Stokes, executive chair of Seven West Media where Roberts-Smith is employed.

#Austrailian star crunch full#

Roberts-Smith’s lawyer, Arthur Moses, asked for 42 days to consider lodging an appeal to the Full Bench of the Federal Court. They are the majority in the SAS and they stood up for what was right and they have been vindicated,” McKenzie added. “Australia should be proud of those men in the SAS. It’s a day of justice for those brave men of the SAS who stood up and told the truth about who Ben Roberts-Smith is - a war criminal, a bully and a liar,” McKenzie told reporters outside court. Nick McKenzie, one of the reporters responsible for the contentious articles, praised the SAS veterans who had testified against the national hero. The civil case made claims of defamation against The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Canberra Times over their articles. His lawyers blamed “corrosive jealousy” by “bitter people” within the SAS who had run a “poisonous campaign against him.”

Roberts-Smith, 44, had denied any wrongdoing. Had such war crime allegations been made in a criminal court, they would have had to be proven to a higher standard of beyond reasonable doubt. But the judge found the unproven allegations would not have further damaged the veteran’s reputation. Reports of domestic violence allegedly committed by Roberts-Smith were also found to be unproven and defamatory. Two of six unlawful killings Roberts-Smith was accused of involvement in were not proven to the civil court standard of balance of probability, the judge found. Roberts-Smith then directed a soldier under his command to shoot Jan dead.Īlso found to be true were accusations that Roberts-Smith, who stands 2.02 meters (6 feet, 7 inches) tall, bullied soldiers and assaulted Afghan civilians. The proven accusations also included that Roberts-Smith killed an unarmed, handcuffed farmer named Ali Jan by kicking him from a cliff top and into a riverbed at the Afghan village of Darwan in 2012. Roberts-Smith pressured a “newly deployed and inexperienced” soldier to kill the second, older man to “blood the rookie,” the court found. The man was one of two unarmed Afghans that Roberts-Smith's patrol had dragged from a tunnel.