Ben Roberts-Smith

Benjamin Roberts-Smith (born 1 November 1978) is an Australian former soldier who served in the Australian Army. He is a recipient of the Victoria Cross for Australia, the highest award for gallantry in battle that can be awarded to a member of the Australian Defence Force. In 2023, he was found in a civil defamation trial to have committed murder and other war crimes while deployed to Afghanistan.

Roberts-Smith joined the Australian Army in 1996 at the age of eighteen. In 1999, he was deployed twice to East Timor. In 2003, he was selected to serve in the elite Special Air Service Regiment (SASR). In 2004, Roberts-Smith was deployed to operations off Fiji as part of Operation Quickstep. In 2005 and 2006, he served as part of Security Detachment Iraq. Roberts-Smith was deployed to Afghanistan on six occasions during 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2012. In addition to the Victoria Cross For Australia, Roberts-Smith was awarded a Medal for Gallantry in 2006 and a Commendation for Distinguished Service in 2012. These honours made him one of Australia's most highly decorated soldiers, and he was once regarded as a national hero.

After his discharge from the Australian Army in 2013, Roberts-Smith was awarded a scholarship to study business at the University of Queensland. In 2015, Kerry Stokes appointed him as deputy general manager of the regional television network Seven Queensland. He was later promoted to General Manager of Seven Brisbane, a role from which he temporarily stepped down in 2021 to focus on his defamation action against Nine Entertainment. Following the outcome of the defamation trial in 2023, Roberts-Smith resigned from Seven West Media.

In October 2017, Roberts-Smith's conduct in Afghanistan came under scrutiny after reports that he had killed a teenager he suspected of spotting his patrol. In August 2018, he commenced defamation proceedings against media outlets that had published allegations that he had committed war crimes and bullied other soldiers. In June 2023, Justice Anthony Besanko dismissed the defamation case, ruling that the media outlets had established, to the standard required in Australian defamation law, that Roberts-Smith murdered four unarmed Afghans and had broken the rules of military engagement. Besanko wrote he had "disgraced his country" by his conduct in Afghanistan. An appeal to the Full Court of the Federal Court—heard over ten days, beginning on 5 February 2024—was unanimously dismissed on 16 May 2025. The High Court of Australia refused an application by Roberts-Smith for special leave to appeal on 4 September 2025 and ordered him to pay the defendants' costs.