Justice Michael Lee also raised questions whether the former commando had lied in court.
The ABC has accused Heston Russell of engaging in “very deliberate dishonesty” in his defamation case against the national broadcaster, as the judge raised questions about whether the former commando had lied in court.
Justice Michael Lee has ruled the articles, read together, conveyed a range of defamatory meanings including that Russell, as commander of the November platoon, “was involved in shooting and killing an Afghan prisoner” in mid-2012. The ABC is seeking to rely on a public interest defence.that he gave a “fake” document to an ABC journalist who was researching a separate story on a different topic in 2021. That story is not part of his defamation case.
During cross-examination last month, Russell was asked about a document he sent ABC journalist Josh Robertson before the reporter wrote a December 2021 article about Russell’s alleged dealings with veterans’ mental health charity Swiss 8.Russell initially told the court this document was a genuine invoice for fitness equipment he ordered in 2020 for Swiss 8, his employer at the time. He later agreed it was not genuine, and told the court he was “confused by the question”.
Lee said that “to take the premeditated steps, if that [is] what occurred, to deliberately go through a process of manipulating a document and sending it to somebody where you know they’re going to rely on it in circumstances where what you’re trying to do is justify allegations made by a charity that you had not remitted funds to the charity seems to me, if proved, pretty bad behaviour”.
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