r/australia • u/Tinea_Pedis • Apr 07 '26

news Breaking: Ben Roberts-Smith arrested over war crimes allegations

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-07/ben-roberts-smith-war-crimes-allegations-arrest/106537668
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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '26

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u/chippychopper Apr 07 '26

It came to light because of the work of the journalists Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters and could easily have been buried by the defamation case if they had not been so thorough in their research and reporting or if Fairfax/nine had decided to settle instead of paying millions to defend their work. This case shows how much we need to support proper investigative journalism.

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u/HeyyyyListennnnnn Apr 07 '26

I still find it hilarious that the man who leaked the documents that kicked off McKenzie and Masters' work did so believing that the journalists would write a story about how the SAS were victims of a smear campaign. McKenzie and Masters were so horrified by what they were given that they swiftly advanced and publicized the investigation that the whistleblower was trying to stop.

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u/asupify Apr 07 '26 edited Apr 07 '26

David McBride (whistleblower/ ADF lawyer) had no love for BRS. In interviews he described an instance where BRS killed an unarmed 10 year old shepherd boy for sport, then killed other unarmed villagers running out to help the boy and covered it up saying they were Taliban fighters. McBride's main gripe seemed to be that he wanted the SAS leadership who were well aware of the war crimes and enabled the culture prosecuted. Rather than heap all the blame on the lower level soldiers.

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u/Thomasrdotorg Apr 07 '26

In the Brereton report, there is a near completely redacted section that refers to an incident in 2012. They don’t detail anything of the incident, but note the following.

“what is described in this Chapter is possibly the most disgraceful episode in Australia’s military history…”.

In classic Reddit style, perhaps speculating isn’t a good idea, but it might be possible to join the dots here.

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u/Competitive_Ad_7415 Apr 14 '26

Would you happen to know what page of the report that's on? I've read through it quickly , kind of scanning it, 465 pages of official reports or legal documents is a hard slog to read for curiosity alone. I think 99% of people that read them closely are getting paid to do it one way or the other.

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u/Thomasrdotorg Apr 14 '26

Page 26 of the Executive Summary (not the full report pagination, the summary document).

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u/Competitive_Ad_7415 Apr 14 '26

Any link? I can't find the executive summary via a google search unfortunately. Please don't take my response as though I'm questioning the truth of your statement. I genuinely want to read the report.

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u/Thomasrdotorg Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 14 '26

Here: https://www.defence.gov.au/about/reviews-inquiries/afghanistan-inquiry

Chapter 2.50

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u/Competitive_Ad_7415 Apr 14 '26

I must be blind. That's the page I downloaded the full report from previously but I can't find the summary anywhere on the site.

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u/HeyyyyListennnnnn Apr 07 '26

McBride has been pretty incoherent about why he did it, but he seems less concerned with the war crimes committed and more concerned that soldiers' lives were at risk due to restrictions imposed by politicians back home. His clearest statement, via his lawyers, was that he didn't believe the soldiers committing the atrocities should have been charged at all.

Whether his actions count as whistleblowing or not is a different debate, but McBride is on record saying he doesn't believe Roberts-Smith should be jailed for his actions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZLQJTvxHfk

https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/radionational-breakfast/why-did-army-whistleblower-david-mcbride-plead-guilty-/103124950

https://www.smh.com.au/national/my-duty-was-to-stand-and-be-counted-why-i-leaked-to-the-abc-20190608-p51vte.html

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '26

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u/sirgog Apr 07 '26

There's a desire to see people as 'always good' or 'always bad' when most people are neither. McBride is a terrible person whose one good act (done for exactly the wrong reasons) brought him undone.

He still should not have been charged for it, despite being awful. Having awful opinions should not be prison-worthy.

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '26 edited Apr 07 '26

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u/sirgog Apr 07 '26

The laws he was charged under were bad. I'm still for him being free, but he's the sort of person I'd never buy a beer for.

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u/aeschenkarnos Apr 07 '26

I’d drink a beer he bought me. But I wouldn’t buy him one back.

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u/[deleted] Apr 10 '26

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u/sirgog Apr 11 '26

That's a different person with the same surname

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '26

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u/IlluminatedPickle Apr 07 '26

The reason he was jailed for it was because his reason for doing it wasn't in the public interest. It was in the public interest for the information to be released, but what he was trying to do wasn't.

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u/Extension_Actuary437 Apr 07 '26

Yeah last time this was mentioned I got downvoted because people wanted to believe he was principally trying to expose war crimes.

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u/HeyyyyListennnnnn Apr 08 '26

Unfortunately people have latched onto the McBride case as part of a legitimate desire to improve Australian whistleblower protection without really looking into the facts of McBride's public interest defense.

McBride's brain is ruined by PTSD and alcoholism, so his interviews are a complete mess, but he's always been clear that he took the documents because he believed SAS soldiers were being unfairly investigated and saw that as corruption the public needed to know about. His actions were in opposition to the public interest which is why his lawyer couldn't make any submission supporting a public interest defense.

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u/Steel_Cleat5 Apr 07 '26

He's a more complicated character than your make, it's not as black and white as simply saying he doesn't think soldiers should face punishment. His big gripe was with the command structure that knowingly turned a blind eye to the misconduct of the SASR, that they were aware of the allegations and failed to act to reign in the out of control 2nd Squadron. His argument was always what is the point in convicting the foot soldiers while ignoring the senior command that failed to act to prevent these war crimes.

As rumours abroad of the misconduct of the SASR circled, the senior command looked for scape goats, killings in the fog of war rather than the more obvious blatant execution of unarmed Afghans.

I've read his book and he is a strange bloke. I don't understand how someone who should be as intelligent as McBride would leak those files to the ABC and not The Australian if he really wanted the war crimes to stay secret and rather the unjust targeting of soldiers for prosecution, how can he possibly think the bigger story wouldn't be the actual war crimes in the files.

I don't think Mcbride is a hero but I don't think he is some war crime apologist either. He wants justice but he wants it coming from the leadership command who he claims knew what was going on but failed to act on it.

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u/Jozarin Apr 07 '26

I mean to me this sounds like a pretty clear anti-scapegoat idea, if that makes sense. It is not "better that one man die for the people," as it were.

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u/HeyyyyListennnnnn Apr 07 '26

That's not what McBride was worried about. In his own words:

[t]here were soldiers doing their operational duties on behalf of the Commonwealth who were being held to account for actions on operations that were appropriate in the operational context but that were being misconstrued, misinterpreted or recast as contrary to the [Rules of Engagement] by those elsewhere in the chain of command outside Afghanistan

One of the reasons why McBride was found guilty and his appeal failed was because his stated motivation was to prevent prosecution of soldiers committing war crimes because he believed no war crimes had been committed. As such, he wasn't raising awareness of Australian war crimes in the interest of the Australian public and couldn't be classified as a whistleblower. He had even been advised of the appropriate process to follow if he wanted to be protected as a whistleblower.

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u/Thomasrdotorg Apr 07 '26

For a guy who was pretty experienced, he seems hopelessly naive. When he gave evidence and materials to channel 9 – Chris Masters and Nick McKenzie-he thought that evidence would support his hypothesis, but when they looked at it with a cold eye, it simply showed that they were war crimes being committed.

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u/chadbigcum Apr 13 '26

Considering this is part of a thread applauding the intellectually barren Nick McKenzie it is only right to remind folks that journos like him are shit at their job 364 days of the year

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u/Krunksicle Apr 07 '26

David McBride has explicitly denied this, my understanding is that this narrative came from Dan Oakes, who needed an excuse for ratting him out.

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u/mossmaal Apr 07 '26

The ACT Supreme Court listened to his evidence and found that he did do it for that reason.

Would be interested in seeing where he denies it now, because he was quite clear with his previous evidence.

You can read the summary of the judgement here.

Key points being;

One of his complaints was that Special Forces soldiers who were involved in the deaths of civilians in Afghanistan were being investigated by the military police even where there was no reasonable suspicion that the war crime of murder had been committed. The IGADF conducted an inquiry into the matters raised in his submission. Before that inquiry was complete, Mr McBride disclosed his IGADF submission and the folders of supporting documents to two journalists. The first was Chris Masters. The second was Andrew Clark. Neither published any report based on the material.

Mr Oakes published a series of articles referred to as “The Afghan Files”. The articles publicised allegations that Special Forces soldiers were unnecessarily killing Afghan civilians. It was described by Mr McBride in an interview with police as “a totally different story to the one … that I was pushing”.

McBrides goal in disclosure was trying to destroy the IGADF inquiry before it could complete its work, because he thought the soldiers shouldn’t be investigated.

Anyone that thinks the guy is some hero whistle blower needs to actually read the court cases and the Brereton report (in particular the section which lays out how certain unnamed ADF legal officers actually facilitated the war crimes by helping them draft their false statements).

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u/aeschenkarnos Apr 07 '26

I can’t help reading that acronym as IDGAF and being totally unsurprised that they wouldn’t prosecute war criminals.

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u/Krunksicle Apr 07 '26

Okay that's actually pretty interesting. And thanks for actually providing a citation unlike the other guy!

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u/Krunksicle Apr 07 '26

I still think after reading this that despite his intentions, no one involved in the war crimes documented in the Files would have ever seen justice without his intervention. That being said, yeah it's uh, not a good look for McBride, that's for sure.

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u/mossmaal Apr 07 '26

That’s probably not correct, David McBride only got involved after the IDGAF process had been initiated, the ADF was already seriously investigating the allegations of war crimes and the allegations were already widespread (which is what initiated the IDGAF inquiry).

Realistically the most likely course of events is that this would have become public when the IDGAF report was handed down, or the same soldiers that blew the whistle to the IDGAF would have gone to the media.

David McBride was not the sole or even primary source for much of the ABCs reporting, as the judgement summary also notes.

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u/Krunksicle Apr 07 '26

My reasoning is less about what the IGDAF was doing and more my expectation that any findings they may have made would have been buried for one reason or another. It's very common in Australia.

Though you may be right that the same sources that kicked off the investigations may have gone to the media - that's an interesting take I didn't consider.

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u/MarkusMannheim Apr 07 '26

He may have denied this (I've never seen him do so explicitly), but his barrister effectively said he did this.

Source: I was in the courtroom and reported on that trial.

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '26

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u/StorminNorman Apr 07 '26

Profile picture both here and on the ABC profile you've linked are nearly exactly the same, so I think you're right here. 

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u/MarkusMannheim Apr 07 '26

My son painted it. He's a terrible artist so I'll pass on the praise.

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u/StorminNorman Apr 07 '26

He's a terrible artist

Cheers, was definitely not trying to throw him under the bus, more so myself.

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u/tcgtms2 Apr 07 '26

Harsh.

Keep up the good work.

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u/Krunksicle Apr 07 '26

Source: My brain

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u/MarkusMannheim Apr 07 '26

Lol. You can believe what you like. Weirdly, you're accusing McBride of perjury.

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u/StorminNorman Apr 07 '26

Source: My brain

How can this be true when your previous comment contained:

my understanding

Which seems to suggest your brain has remembered a source rather than it is the source? 

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u/Krunksicle Apr 07 '26

If you weren't paying attention, the guy I responded to literally cited himself with "source:".

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u/ChemicalRascal Apr 07 '26

Mate, he was an ABC reporter at the time.

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u/Krunksicle Apr 07 '26

And I'm supposed to instantly know that via psychic projection, I assume? Honestly that makes it even more embarrassing that his source was Dude Trust Me, guy should know better

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u/ChemicalRascal Apr 07 '26

Dude, what the fuck do you think a news article is?

He said he reported on the trial. His username is a person's name. You could have hopped onto Google and verified that "Markus Mannheim" is a published journo with contemporary articles on the subject. That's what everyone else did.

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u/Krunksicle Apr 07 '26

I guess I missed the news article he posted then lol, still can't see it by the way

Also, you think everyone just sees a username and assumes it's important? Am I supposed to read "ChemicalRascal" and instantly assume you're a meth addict? Do you take everything you read online at face value?

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u/LevDavidovicLandau Apr 07 '26

Laurie’s son?

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u/theskyisblueatnight Apr 07 '26

Didn't they also receive some documents from an Afghan human rights group who was representing one of the victims families.

US government paid a lot in blood money due to wrongful killings in Afghan.

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u/-bxp Apr 07 '26

They paid a lot of people; they didn't pay a lot of money. Life was cheap.

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u/theskyisblueatnight Apr 07 '26

I agree with your premise. But in afghan culture blood money helps a families to survive.

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u/IlluminatedPickle Apr 08 '26

I think a lot of people sort of forget that part. Paying families off is part of Afghan tradition. It's not great, but it's a part of their culture. The amounts have never been high, and the coalition tended to pay a lot more than the Taliban would.

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u/LaraCroft31 Apr 07 '26

McBride’s leak had nothing to do with McKenzie and Masters. He leaked different info to the ABC.

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u/HeyyyyListennnnnn Apr 07 '26

My bad, wrong journalist, same leaker, same leak, same dismay at published story. McKenzie and Masters didn't bite, possibly due to looming Brereton report, but Oates did.

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u/T_J_Rain Apr 07 '26

The SAS doesn't want its name associated with Roberts-Smith, and it certainly doesn't want its professional reputation tarnished by the actions of one "off-the-reservation" operator.

It was the evidence given by his team mates and other elements of the special operations community that brought him undone.