Assistant defence minister tells court he was troubled by ‘warrior culture’ in elite SAS regiment when he and Roberts-Smith were comrades in Afghanistan
Australia’s Special Air Service regiment was riven by a “culture war” with one faction obsessed by a “pagan warrior ethos” where “killing was a sacrament in itself”, the assistant defence minister, Andrew Hastie, has told Ben Roberts-Smith’s defamation trial.
Hastie served alongside Roberts-Smith on a mission in October 2012 to Syahchow, in Uruzgan province, where the newspapers allege a “blooding” incident took place involving Roberts-Smith. The practice involves a new soldier being initiated into the regiment by being ordered to register their first “kill” on operation – allegedly often of an unarmed prisoner.Roberts-Smith ordered another soldier, Person 66, to kill a captive, unarmed Afghan man who’d been taken out into a field.
He said he later saw Person 66 in the compound at Syahchow “standing slightly off from the rest of the patrol looking nervous”. Roberts-Smith has denied the Syahchow allegation. Asked directly during his evidence last year if he had ordered Person 66 to execute a prisoner, Roberts-Smith said: “I did not.”He was not asked questions specifically about Syahchow and objected to giving evidence about missions in Afghanistan on the basis of self-incrimination. That objection is currently being considered by Justice Anthony Besanko.
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