Ben Roberts-Smith has attacked a decide’s findings that he engaged in battle crimes as inconceivable, speculative and primarily based on unreliable witnesses.
The former SAS Corporal has appealed a Federal Court judgment from final month which discovered he engaged in illegal conduct whereas deployed in Afghanistan together with being concerned within the homicide of 4 unarmed prisoners.
In courtroom paperwork considered by AAP, the Victoria Cross recipient claims that Justice Anthony Besanko made various essential errors when assessing the proof relating to whether or not any battle crimes befell or not.
He claims the decide “impermissibly construed” proof that two prisoners have been unlawfully executed at an Afghan compound code-named Whiskey 108.
One of those prisoners was machine gunned by Roberts-Smith who then took his prosthetic leg again to Australia to be used as a novelty ingesting vessel, Justice Besanko discovered.
The decide used round reasoning and cherry-picked the proof to come back to his findings that the news companies’ reviews on the battle crimes have been considerably true to the civil customary of proof, wrote Roberts-Smith in his discover of enchantment.
It was additionally inconceivable there was a “widespread conspiracy to conceal the truth” about these two illegal killings and the decide didn’t take care of this downside, he wrote.
Other findings that the battle veteran kicked a handcuffed prisoner off a cliff at Darwan after which ordered his execution, and that he ordered the killing of one other prisoner in Chinartu, are additionally challenged.
Roberts-Smith is searching for to have the judgment overturned.
He has requested that the three-judge panel of the Full Federal Court then assess his declare for damages or remit the matter again to a single Federal Court decide apart from Justice Besanko.
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Source: www.9news.com.au
