\n A prominent Australian former SAS soldier launched an appeal Monday after losing a defamation case that implicated him in a string of war crimes in Afghanistan.\n<\/p>\n
\n Ben Roberts-Smith, who was a member of Australia's elite Special Air Service regiment, sued three Australian newspapers over stories printed in 2018 that alleged he was involved in the killings of unarmed Afghan prisoners.\n<\/p>\n
\n The ex-soldier lost the multi-million-dollar courtroom battle in June 2023, with a judge finding the newspapers had proven that the bulk of their allegations were \"substantially\" true.\n<\/p>\n
\n Roberts-Smith, 45, attended the first day of the appeal hearings in Sydney, wearing a dark suit, white shirt and light grey tie as he entered the Federal Court building.\n<\/p>\n
\n His lawyers argued in the appeal that the judge \"erred\" in the way he assessed some of the evidence.\n<\/p>\n
\n The trial is scheduled to run over two weeks.\n<\/p>\n
\n Before the defamation trial, Perth-born Roberts-Smith had been Australia's most famous and distinguished living soldier.\n<\/p>\n
\n He won the Victoria Cross -- Australia's highest military honour -- for \"conspicuous gallantry\" in Afghanistan while on the hunt for a senior Taliban commander.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times shredded this reputation when they published a series of bombshell reports alleging that Roberts-Smith had engaged in a pattern of criminal and immoral behaviour while serving overseas.\n<\/p>\n
\n The papers reported Roberts-Smith had kicked an unarmed Afghan civilian off a cliff and ordered subordinates to shoot him.\n<\/p>\n
\n He was also said to have taken part in the machine-gunning of a man with a prosthetic leg, later bringing the leg back to an army bar and using it as a drinking vessel with comrades.\n<\/p>\n
\n The court ruling ultimately implicated Roberts-Smith in the murder of four unarmed Afghan prisoners.\n<\/p>\n
\n He has not been charged in a criminal court over the allegations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A prominent Australian former SAS soldier launched an appeal Monday after losing a defamation case that implicated him in a string of war crimes in Afghanistan. Ben Roberts-Smith, who was a member of Australia's elite Special Air Service regiment, sued three Australian newspapers over stories printed in 2018 that alleged he was involved in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-128098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n