By Alexander Wilson-
Lawyers representing a Victorian Cross recipient have revealed “hundreds” of photos of Australian soldiers drinking from a prosthetic leg taken from a slain Afghan at an unauthorised bar at Australia’s military base in Afghanistan, a court has heard.
The existence of some photographs had been widely broadcast and published, but this is the first time the full extent of damning photos reflect very depraved practices of soldiers in this case has been revealed.
More detailed photos from the Australian soldiers’ underground bar, the Fat Ladies’ Arms, was revealed before the federal court on Wednesday.
The high profile defamation trial, expected to run for 10 weeks, begins in Sydney on 7 June. It was brought by Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith against the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Canberra Times newspapers, lawyers for Roberts-Smith are an incredible development in the high profile case.
They include hundreds of images of soldiers drinking at the bar, and they were trying to process them before the trial began.
“We have been working to itemise items by Friday 4pm,” Matthew Richardson, for Roberts-Smith, told the court. “We cannot do that for hundreds of images of soldiers drinking from the leg – it’s too onerous, it’s too long.”
Richardson also said: “All these photos are in the possession of the respondent [Nine newspapers] because the USBs were provided by my client’s ex-wife”.
Lawyers for the newspapers rejected the assertion that USBs, containing images and other relevant material, had been disseminated by Emma Roberts, Roberts-Smith’s estranged former wife.
According to the newspapers’ defence to Roberts-Smith statement of claim, on Easter Sunday 2009 Roberts-Smith shot an Afghan civilian with a prosthetic leg.
The prosthetic leg was “souvenired” from his body and taken back to the Australians’ base, where it was used as a drinking vessel in the Fat Ladies’ Arms.
Roberts-Smith’s lawyers have previously told the court he did shoot a man with the prosthesis, who was a Taliban soldier, but that the leg had been taken back to the base by another soldier and that Roberts-Smith did not “souvenir” the leg or drink from it.
The lawyers told the court that Roberts-Smith thought it was “disgusting” to souvenir a body part, albeit an artificial one, from someone who had been killed in action.
Defamation Suit
Roberts-Smith is suing the Age, the SMH and the Canberra Times for defamation over a series of reports published in 2018 which he alleges are defamatory because they portray him as someone who “broke the moral and legal rules of military engagement” and committed war crimes including murder.
Roberts-Smith, 42, has consistently denied the allegations, saying they were “false”, “baseless” and “completely without any foundation in truth”.