Human Rights Watch on Tuesday welcomed the recent arrest by Australian police of Ben Roberts-Smith, an Australian soldier accused of committing five counts of war crimes in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012, as a step towards justice for victims.

The arrest comes almost six years after release of the Independent Afghanistan Inquiry, or the Brereton Report, which detailed several war crimes committed by Australian troops from 2005 to 2016. Roberts-Smith, former member of the Special Air Service Regiment, is currently one of Australia’s most decorated soldiers and is widely considered a war hero, though conviction would strip those honors. The development marks a continued search for restorative justice as it relates to Australian military war crimes in Afghanistan.

Details of Roberts-Smith’s crimes came to attention when he filed a defamation lawsuit against media outlets that revealed his alleged human rights violations in Afghanistan. The 110-day trial was the first time an Australian court scrutinized war crime allegations against Australian military personnel and resulted in Judge Anthony Besanko ruling that the media reports contained “substantial truth.”

Besanko found war crime allegations highly credible, including reports that Roberts-Smith kicked a handcuffed prisoner off a 10-meter cliff, murdered an unarmed man with a prosthetic leg, ordered the execution of a junior soldier, and authorized the killing of a prisoner. The court also found that Roberts-Smith’s attempts to conceal classified evidence of his acts, found on USB sticks, illustrated a dishonest character.

The court later applied the contextual truth defense to dismiss additional claims brought by Roberts-Smith. It found that, in the event that adjacent reports could not be proven, they would not substantially impact his reputation, since the core allegations were true.

Criminal charges were not brought against Roberts-Smith until April 7 of this year due to extreme difficulty in conducting criminal investigations in war zones and the higher legal standard of proof required for these types of charges. Difficulty in obtaining justice for victims in war zones is well-documented, often due to lacking access to active conflict zones, destruction of essential evidence and documentation, and the inability of law enforcement to operate.

Another soldier, Oliver Schulz, was the first Australian arrested for charges of war crimes in Afghanistan in early 2023. His trial will not commence until 2027.