In brief:
- Court documents released Thursday show Roberts-Smith investigating opportunities overseas.
- A written affadavit from his partner insists it was not the couple’s intention to flee.
Before his recent arrest, Ben Roberts-Smith, a decorated war veteran, was exploring business ventures abroad. However, his partner, Sarah Matulin, insists that he never planned to evade the legal process and was always prepared to return to Australia should criminal charges arise.
Roberts-Smith, who served as an SAS soldier, faced arrest on April 7, accused of either committing or directing the killings of five unarmed detainees during his tours in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012. Following his detention, he was granted bail last Friday after his father, Len Roberts-Smith, a former judge at the Supreme Court of Western Australia, posted a $250,000 surety.
Details from Roberts-Smith’s bail proceedings at Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court, which were made public on Thursday, reveal his and Matulin’s plans to establish a business overseas. This move was intended to bring some stability to their lives. Nevertheless, Matulin emphasized in an affidavit submitted to the court that their intentions were never to escape legal accountability.
“We have never planned to run away from this and have always intended to face the criminal charges if they presented,” Matulin declared, underscoring their commitment to confronting the charges head-on.
In an affidavit filed with the court, Matulin wrote they had wanted to move out of Australia to create some normalcy in their lives, but her partner had always intended to return if charged.
“We have never planned to run away from this and have always intended to face the criminal charges if they presented,” she wrote.
“We have had countless discussions that if he was ever requested to do so, he would hand himself into police custody voluntarily.”
In March 2023, Roberts-Smith contacted the chief executive of an outdoor weather protection firm in Chiang Mai, Thailand, looking to meet business contacts over a beer.
By October, the couple had become serious about moving overseas, contacting a friend who owned an avocado farm in Myanmar to discuss opportunities, Matulin wrote.
Later that month, Roberts-Smith had started inquiring about buying a fitness and wellness business in Spain, and began the visa process to move there.
Matulin said it was no secret they wanted to move to Spain because they had openly discussed this with family and friends.
In his own affidavit, Roberts-Smith said he had flown overseas 28 times since 2018 — including a taxpayer-funded trip to the UK for Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral in 2022.
He had always returned despite knowing he was being investigated for war crimes, he wrote.
His lawyer Karen Espiner revealed in another affidavit that she offered to have her client arrested by “appointment” by handing himself in at a police station if police disclosed he was going to be charged.
The solicitor said Roberts-Smith did not tell the Officer of the Special Investigator — which was probing the war crime allegations — of the Spanish plans because there were no restrictions on his travel at the time.
The Victoria Cross recipient has consistently proclaimed his innocence, including during a failed defamation action against publisher Nine over articles detailing a number of alleged war crimes.
While the war veteran’s former employer Kerry Stokes had funded the defamation proceedings, Roberts-Smith revealed he had to liquidate all his assets to fund the later failed appeals.
His parents also coughed up $400,000 to pay for his legal costs, his affidavit says.
“I have no assets and my personal savings are significantly depleted,” he wrote.
Roberts-Smith receives a service pension of $4500 a fortnight, his affidavit says.
He is accused of machine-gunning an Aghan prisoner Mohammed Essa and ordering the execution of his son Ahmadullah to “blood the rookie” during a raid at a compound called Whiskey 108 in April 2009.
Ahmadullah had a prosthetic leg.
The then-SAS soldier placed firearms on the bodies to falsely claim they were enemy combatants, court documents seen by AAP say.
In August 2012 at the village of Darwan, Roberts-Smith is accused of kicking a hand-cuffed Ali Jan off a 10 metre cliff before ordering that he be dragged over a creek bed and shot.
Two months later at Syahchow, he allegedly lined up two prisoners in a corn field, shooting one of them with another soldier.
He ordered a subordinate to shoot the other before throwing a grenade on the bodies to cover up what he had done, court documents say.
The matter will return to court on June 2.
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