In a separate incident, Australian authorities have apprehended Ben Roberts-Smith, the nation’s most distinguished living soldier, at age 47. He faces allegations of committing five war crimes, including murder, during his service in Afghanistan.

Roberts-Smith, once a part of the Australian Defence Force, was taken into custody at Sydney Airport on Tuesday. His arrest has stirred considerable controversy, drawing criticism from a former Australian prime minister who contended that judging soldiers’ actions in combat by civilian standards is unjust. Elon Musk, owner of X, also criticized the arrest, labeling it as “insane.”

According to the Australian Federal Police and the Office of the Special Investigator, the charges against Roberts-Smith relate to the deaths of five unarmed Afghan civilians, occurring in three separate incidents between 2009 and 2012. AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett accused Roberts-Smith of either directly killing these individuals or directing a subordinate to do so. If found guilty, he could face a life sentence for each charge.

“The allegation is that the victims were not participating in hostilities at the time of their deaths in Afghanistan,” Barrett stated at a press briefing. “It is further alleged that these individuals were detained, unarmed, and under the control of ADF members when they were killed.”

Ben Roberts-Smith is pictured arriving at the Federal Court in Sydney on June 9, 2021. The highly decorated war veteran filed an appeal on July 11, 2023, against a civil court decision that held him accountable for the unlawful killings of four Afghans. (Rick Rycroft/AP)

The investigation into Roberts-Smith began in 2021, according to Ross Barnett, director of investigations at the Office of the Special Investigator. Roberts-Smith received the Victoria Cross after storming two enemy machine guns during his fifth tour in Afghanistan.

Barnett said at the press conference that the investigation was “under challenging circumstances,” given that some of the murders occurred well over a decade ago and investigators were unable to visit Afghanistan.

“We don’t have access to the crime scenes, we don’t have photographs, site plans, measurements, the recovery of projectiles, blood spatter analysis, all of those things we would normally get at a crime scene,” Barnett said at the press conference.

Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith VC, MG attends a Victoria Cross and George Cross Association Reunion Service at St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church on May 30, 2012 in London, England. (Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images)

While Australia’s current prime minister has yet to weigh in on the arrest, former Australian Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Party Tony Abbott expressed his support for Roberts-Smith on X in a lengthy post.

“If Ben Roberts-Smith transgressed, why wasn’t this picked up prior to his gallantry awards and why wasn’t any culture of brutality towards prisoners detected by his more senior officers, and dealt with quickly, rather than being allowed to fester, as has been alleged, for over a decade?” Abbott wrote.

Allegations that Roberts-Smith engaged in war crimes began circulating publicly in 2017 and 2018 in articles published by The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times.

Roberts-Smith filed a defamation suit against the papers, which became Australia’s most expensive defamation trial, but in 2023, a Federal Court judge ruled that four of the six murder allegations brought by the papers against Roberts-Smith were legitimate.

In one of the allegations ruled to have merit by Justice Anthony Besanko, Roberts-Smith allegedly marched a handcuffed Afghan man named Ali Jan off the edge of a 10-meter cliff. He survived the fall, but Roberts-Smith and his fellow soldiers walked down a footpath to meet him. Roberts-Smith then ordered a subordinate, known as Person 11 in court, to shoot him.

Ben Roberts-Smith departs the Federal Court of Australia in Sydney on June 7, 2021 in Sydney, Australia. (Sam Mooy/Getty Images)

The High Court dismissed Roberts-Smith’s appeal of the ruling in September 2025.

The criminal charges against Roberts-Smith stem from a joint effort by OSI and AFP. The two Australian agencies have conducted 53 investigations into ADF members tied to war crime allegations in Afghanistan. Ten of the investigations remain ongoing.