Person 14,who served eight tours in Afghanistan,was giving evidence in Sydney on Friday in Mr Roberts-Smith’s long-running defamation action againstThe Age, The Sydney Morning Herald andThe Canberra Times.
In other evidence,Person 14 said he witnessed Mr Roberts-Smith on a mission in 2012 tell an interpreter,Person 13,to direct a member of the Afghan Partner Force to shoot an Afghan man they had been questioning,“or I will”.
He said the interpreter “stumbled” verbally and “didn’t relay” the order at first,before saying something in an “Afghan dialect”. A member of the partner force then shot the Afghan man dead,he said.
“I was perplexed but didn’t say anything,” Person 14 said.
The SAS soldier said he witnessed a separate incident in 2009 in which an Australian soldier shot an Afghan man who had a prosthetic leg at close range with a distinctive machine gun that he later saw in the possession of Mr Roberts-Smith.
Person 14 said he was involved in a mission with his patrol on Easter Sunday,2009,which involved clearing buildings in a compound known as Whiskey 108.
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He said he saw three Australian soldiers who appeared to be from two different patrols with “a black object which was ... similar to a human”. The object was “thrown to the ground”,he said,before a soldier raised a machine gun known as an F89 Para Minimi and fired “an extended burst”.
He could not recognise who fired the gun,he said,but they were carrying the “distinctive” Para Minimi weapon that was “not carried by many” soldiers.
“From my angle ... it wasn’t favourable conditions to identify[the soldiers] ... given that we all dress similar and wear similar items. However,the things that did stand out was the Minimi and the choice of campaint[camouflage paint],” he said.
Person 14 said two of the soldiers he witnessed in the group had “highly illuminated grey-brown campaint” on their faces,which he recognised as a style used by a troop led by a commander known as Person 5,while the third soldier “was definitely wearing the same,or similar,campaint style as Ben Roberts-Smith”.
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He told the court he “saw who had the Minimi” after the mission was completed,and it was “Ben Roberts-Smith”.
Person 14 said that on closer inspection the “black object” was an Afghan man with a prosthetic leg. He said he did not see a weapon on the dead man’s body.
He subsequently saw the prosthetic leg used by soldiers as a drinking vessel at the SAS headquarters in Afghanistan as well as in Australia,he said,and admitted that he was among the soldiers who drank from it. Asked if Mr Roberts-Smith ever drank from it,Person 14 said:“Not that I’m aware of.”
Under cross-examination by Mr Roberts-Smith’s barrister,Arthur Moses,SC,Person 14 said he “had some doubts” about the awarding of the Victoria Cross to his comrade in 2011,but he did not express those doubts to others.
Earlier this week, a serving SAS soldier known as Person 41 gave evidence that he saw Mr Roberts-Smith during the Easter Sunday mission in 2009 “frog-marching” an Afghan man,throwing him to the ground and firing “three to five rounds” into his back. He said he became aware after the alleged killing that the man had a prosthetic leg.
Person 41 told the court he was not in Person 5’s patrol.
Giving evidence earlier on Friday,Person 14 said he heard Person 5 say in front of troops at their Tarin Kowt base before the Whiskey 108 mission that he was going to “blood the rookie”.
Asked what he understood that to mean,Person 14 said it referred to a new member of the troop getting a “kill”. He believed the “rookie” was Person 4.
Mr Roberts-Smith is suing for defamation over a series of reports in 2018 that he says portray him as a war criminal. The defamation trial resumed in the Federal Court in Sydney on Wednesday after a six-month break.
The Age and theHerald, owned by Nine,andThe Canberra Times,now under separate ownership,are seeking to rely on a defence of truth. They allege Mr Roberts-Smith committed or was involved in six murders of Afghans under the control of Australian troops,when they cannot be killed under the rules of engagement.
The former SAS soldier maintains any killings in Afghanistan were carried out lawfully in the heat of battle.
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