Accused war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith has launched a brand, saying he needs the income to support his family and fund his legal expenses after being charged with murdering or ordering the murders of five unarmed detainees while deployed in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012. Roberts-Smith launched the label with a video on Instagram of him walking along a beach on the Gold Coast and working out, soundtracked by media reports about him being awarded the Victoria Cross and his subsequent arrest. The video included the caption: “Get ready….the time has come. #neveroutofthefight #underdog”.
Roberts-Smith, 47, was arrested in April and charged with murdering or ordering the murders of five unarmed detainees while deployed in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012. In a statement released that month, he said he categorically denied all allegations against him and that he had “always acted within my values, within my training and within the rules of engagement”. Roberts-Smith said the brand EPIC 1 TWO was named after his radio call sign on the mission for which he was awarded the Victoria Cross.
The classic example of that is anyone that had a profile and wants to support me gets trashed in the media just simply for saying that they think I should be entitled to a fair process. It’s about the underdog, it’s about people just knowing that no matter how hard it is for them, no matter what struggle that they face, they are going to get through it. They’ve just got to keep going.” In a statement, Roberts-Smith said the brand represented “something very personal to me”.
Roberts-Smith was released on bail after his father, Len Roberts-Smith, a former Western Australian supreme court judge, paid a $250,000 surety. The charges against Roberts-Smith, Australia’s most decorated living soldier, relate to three separate incidents, according to court documents. Charges one and two against Roberts-Smith relate to two alleged murders committed at the village of Kakarak in southern Afghanistan on 12 April 2009.
Two men, a father and son named Mohammad Essa and Ahmadullah, were found hiding in a tunnel in a compound given the designation “Whiskey 108”. It is alleged Ahmadullah, who wore a prosthetic leg, was then carried outside the compound walls, “thrown to the ground and shot multiple times by Roberts-Smith with a belt-fed machine gun”, in an act witnessed by several Australian soldiers. Roberts-Smith then allegedly walked back into the area inside the compound where Mohammad Essa remained, and ordered another soldier to kill him.
The third charge relates to an incident on 11 September 2012, during a search for a rogue Afghan national army soldier, Hekmatullah, who had killed three and wounded two Australian soldiers. Roberts-Smith allegedly ordered that another soldier kill a farmer named Ali Jan during that mission. The fourth and fifth charges against Roberts-Smith allege he was complicit in the murder of two prisoners who were marched to the edge of a cornfield under the control of Australian soldiers during a mission in the village of Syahchow in October 2012.
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