Australian war veteran loses defamation lawsuit over Afghan killings

One of Australia's most decorated living soldiers on Thursday lost a defamation lawsuit against three newspapers which accused him of involvement in the unlawful killings of six Afghans during his deployment to Afghanistan.

The newspapers successfully established that their reports were true in relation to most of the defamatory imputations that the soldier complained about, said Federal Court judge Anthony Besanko in Sydney, ending a case which put the secretive wartime conduct of elite SAS troops on rare public display. Former special forces corporal Ben Roberts-Smith, 44, had sued the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age and the Canberra Times for portraying him as someone who "broke the moral and legal rules of military engagement" in Afghanistan where he served from 2006 to 2012.