Is it known whether testimony provided to the court as part of Ben Roberts-Smith defamation trial played a role in these charges being able to be brought?

Testimony provided by various individuals in the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation trial shed a lot of light on bad behaviour by Australian soldiers.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 12:54 AM on March 20, 2023

Another way to shed light on bad behaviour by Australian soldiers: just follow them on social media.
posted by flabdablet at 2:29 AM on March 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

Footage broadcast by the ABC’s Four Corners program shows an Australian trooper, allegedly Schulz, shooting dead a prone Afghan man, who is lying with his hands up, in a wheat field in southern Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province.

Big thank you for The Wiggles and Bananas in Pyjamas for funding this important investigative work. Without them, consecutive conservative government's budget cuts to our public broadcaster would have made this impossible. This is Murdoch country, reporting the actual fucking truth inspires howls of media bias from the right and the ABC is a constant target .

So thank you B1, B2, Bluey and Yellow Wiggle. You are saving journalism in Australia.
posted by adept256 at 3:02 AM on March 20, 2023 [11 favorites]

Fascinating. It seems that in this case, Australian law requires this? I assume this is fairly unique? Does anyone know how that occurred?
posted by corb at 4:51 AM on March 20, 2023

I used to work on war crimes and mass atrocity cases in The Hague. This is hugely significant, because this is how war crimes cases are supposed to be prosecuted under the Rome Statute's framework. National authorities are supposed to try suspected war criminals in their regularly-constituted courts after an investigation under domestic laws before any international court's jurisdiction may is invoked. But somehow, this doesn't seem to happen.

In the case the UK and alleged war crimes committed in Iraq, over 3,000 allegations were submitted to various bodies: the Iraq Historic Allegations Team, Service Police Legacy Investigations, and the Service Prosecuting Authority. These were all under the MoD, and after over a decade of work these respective offices prosecuted zero cases. Not one. Every single case was deemed to lack sufficient evidence, and it's noteworthy that the conviction (in front of a court martial) of Donald Payne in 2007 is apparently the first time in UK history that a servicemember has been convicted of war crimes - that's the uphill battle these charges face.
posted by 1adam12 at 10:01 AM on March 20, 2023 [7 favorites]

Fascinating. It seems that in this case, Australian law requires this? I assume this is fairly unique? Does anyone know how that occurred?

"The Defence Force Discipline Act establishes the main facets of Australia’s military justice system. This includes the director of military prosecutions, who prosecutes Australian Defence Force (ADF) members for serious criminal conduct. The act also sets up our system of military tribunals, including defence force magistrates and courts martial.

Unlike most domestic criminal law, the act applies extra-territorially. This allows the ADF to respond to criminal conduct alleged to have taken place overseas.

The act also sets out the “service offences” that can be committed by defence members (and a small category of civilians). There are three broad kinds of offences:

those that are unique to the defence force, such as disobeying a lawful general order or being absent without leave;

those that are similar to civilian offences but have specific service aspects to them – for example, assaulting a superior officer. In light of the discipline implications, sometimes these offences have penalties far more severe than their civilian counterparts; and

those that are more directly analogous to civilian offences in the sense that they are not as military-specific – for example, assault."
posted by clavdivs at 2:17 PM on March 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

This man isn’t being charged with a military crime though, it’s the civil crime of murder and he’ll be tried in an ordinary criminal proceedings.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 2:50 PM on March 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

Right. As I understand it, domestic murder charges even though the crime happened when he was a solder. I believe the procedure here is not have solders or others escape justice regardless of military status or where the crime was committed.
posted by clavdivs at 6:49 PM on March 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

I can't condone what he did and killing innocent people is deeply wrong no matter the circumstances. But we keep doing this thing where we train our young people to kill, arm them with weapons that are designed to kill as many people as efficiently as possible then send them into situations they have no way of being prepared for, telling them to kill as many people as they can. Then we wring our hands and act all surprised when they go off-mission. If he is indeed guilty of the crime he's been charged with, our justice system means he must be punished.

But what about all the other people that are also culpable? How many people are being charged as an accessory to murder over this? Again, not condoning what he (allegedly) did, but he's hardly a lone gunman that set out to kill people on his own agenda. If he is guilty of murder, there are at least dozens of people that are guilty of accessory to murder. There's no way anyone involved in the chain of orders that put that specific person in that specific situation can deny they didn't know something like this would happen. It has happened in every single war and will continue to happen.

There's no doubt that the military attracts all sorts of people that start off as bullies and feel empowered and encouraged to act out their wildest fantasies when they are let loose, but we should be better at filtering people like that out of the military. Again, none of this is surprising and we can't throw up our hands in horror when people do exactly what we knew they would do.
posted by dg at 3:19 PM on March 21, 2023 [1 favorite]