War veteran Ben Roberts-Smith told a fellow Special Air Service soldier that if his performance did not improve he would “get a bullet in the back of the head”, the Federal Court has heard.
Giving evidence in Mr Roberts-Smith’s defamation case against The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times, a serving SAS soldier told the court in Sydney on Thursday that the decorated soldier had bullied him, including spitting on the ground in front of him and letting doors slam in his face.
Ben Roberts-Smith arriving at the Federal Court in Sydney on Wednesday.Credit:Rhett Wyman
The soldier, dubbed Person 1, joined the Defence Force in 2000 as an Army reservist before being selected for the SAS in 2004. He said he was deployed to Afghanistan seven times including as part of Mr Roberts-Smith’s patrol in 2006.
He told the court that Mr Roberts-Smith had told him during pre-deployment training that “he didn’t think I had the required skills or ability to deploy to Afghanistan” and “he was going to do everything he could in his power to have me removed from his team and get one of his colleagues to replace me”.
He said that members of his team would “make disparaging remarks to me” about his relative lack of experience because he was from a reserve background while the other soldiers had “significantly more experience than me”.
Person 1 acknowledged that he received some performance reviews during “a few months” in 2006 that contained legitimate professional criticism and that some of his skills such as manoeuvring vehicles were not up to standard at that time.
He agreed that he did not believe that his performance reviews constituted bullying, and acknowledged that he had made a mistake on a mission with Mr Roberts-Smith in 2006 in which he did not oil his machine gun.
He told the court that Mr Roberts-Smith told him after that mission, “if your performance doesn’t improve on our next patrol you’re going to get a bullet in the back of the head”.
“It made me fearful for my own personal safety,” Person 1 said. “It made me lose more confidence. It made me perform worse.”
He said he reported the incident to his superiors and Mr Roberts-Smith subsequently approached him while he was standing in line for lunch one day and “stood right up close to me … looked down on me [and said], ‘If you’re going to make accusations, c–t, you’d better have some f–king proof.’”
The court heard Person 1’s performance reviews improved when he was moved out of Mr Roberts-Smith’s patrol. He is now a parachute instructor at a Defence Force school within the special operations command.
Person 1 told the court that he was involved in a mission with Mr Roberts-Smith in June 2006 in which his patrol set up an observation post to provide covert surveillance of Afghanistan’s Chora Pass and “get a feel for the area … what we call pattern of life”.
He said that he and another soldier, Person 2, spotted an Afghan man move out in front of them at some distance, but he didn’t believe the man had spotted the soldiers. He did not see any weapons on the man but believed he had a satchel bag slung across his body.
Another soldier subsequently asked Person 1 and 2 why they didn’t shoot at the Afghan man. He told the court he responded that they were at an observation post, meaning that any noise might alert others in the area to their hiding place.
Person 1 said he subsequently heard shots, and was shown an incident report recording that the Afghan man was “armed with an AK varient [sic] weapon”, “aggressively patroling [sic]” with “both hands on weapon”. The report said the man was shot by two soldiers, identified by their call sign. Person 1 said he believed one of the call signs belonged to Mr Roberts-Smith.
“I did not observe an AK weapon. I did not observe them ready to fire,” Person 1 said of the Afghan man.
Mr Roberts-Smith launched defamation proceedings in 2018 against The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, owned by Nine, and The Canberra Times, now under separate ownership, over a series of articles that he says accuse him of being a war criminal and engaging in a campaign of bullying against another soldier, among other claims.
He denies all wrongdoing. The media outlets are seeking to rely on a defence of truth and 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, and that he bullied a fellow soldier.
The former SAS soldier maintains any killings in Afghanistan were carried out lawfully in the heat of battle and that he did not engage in bullying.
The hearing continues.
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