On the morning of April 7, 2026, officers from the Australian Federal Police approached a man stepping off a domestic flight at Sydney Airport and placed him under arrest. The man was Ben Roberts-Smith. Holder of Australia’s highest military honour, former elite special forces soldier, and until recently the most celebrated and decorated living warrior this country had produced. He was charged with five counts of the war crime of murder, each carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

The arrest sent shockwaves through Australia. And yet, depending on which side of the bitterly divided topic you inhabit, it was either the long-overdue reckoning of a soldier who allegedly committed atrocities on the battlefield, or the final, devastating chapter in what his defenders call the politically motivated destruction of a hero and an innocent man.

Both positions are held with ferocious conviction. And in a country whose legal system enshrines the presumption of innocence – where a person is innocent until proven guilty – the truth of what actually happened in the mountains of Afghanistan more than a decade ago remains, legally speaking, unproven.

Who Is Ben Roberts-Smith?

For readers outside Australia, some context is essential, because the Roberts-Smith story is inseparable from the mythology surrounding it.

Australia has a concept called “the ANZAC spirit”. A near-sacred national identity built around the image of the courageous, self-sacrificing soldier, forged in the disastrous World War One campaign at Gallipoli and burnished through every conflict since. The concept of ‘mateship’, stoicism and hard work have become synonymous with the average Aussie fought for by the brave ANZAC’s (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps). For a country that lacks the grand imperial narratives of Britain or the revolutionary founding stories of America, the digger – the Australian frontline soldier – occupies an almost religious space in the national psyche. It is a reverence that Israelis, who share their own profound and deeply personal relationship with their military, will recognise immediately.

Ben Roberts-Smith was, for a decade, the living embodiment of the ANZAC digger spirit.

Born in 1978 in Perth, Western Australia, the son of a Supreme Court judge, he enlisted in the army at eighteen and rose through the ranks to serve with the Special Air Service Regiment – the SAS – Australia’s most elite special forces unit, roughly equivalent to Britain’s SAS or Israel’s Sayeret Matkal. He was a young man that towered above the rest, standing at 6’5” , with broad shoulders, chiseled jaw line, Roberts Smith could be described as the physical embodiment of an elite special forces soldier. Deployed multiple times to Afghanistan, he was awarded the Victoria Cross in 2011 – the highest honour Australia can bestow on a soldier. It was for single-handedly charging two enemy machine-gun positions under fire to rescue his pinned-down comrades. He also received the Medal for Gallantry for a separate action.

Back home, he was feted like royalty. He was named Australian Father of the Year. He was given a scholarship to study business at a prestigious university. Billionaire media mogul Kerry Stokes handed him executive leadership roles at the Channel Seven television network. He attended national commemorations as a living symbol of Australian courage. His face appeared on magazine covers. Roberts-Smith became the poster boy for Australian heroism, bravery and sacrifice. A figure that represented the very best of what this country has to offer and the physical emulate of our sacred Defence Forces.

But then came the allegations that would consume everything.

The Allegations That Changed Everything

In 2017/18, a series of explosive investigative reports by journalists Nick McKenzie, Chris Masters, and others alleged that Roberts-Smith had committed multiple war crimes during his deployments in Afghanistan’s Uruzgan Province.

The allegations, in their specificity, were harrowing. Roberts-Smith........

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