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The full court of the Federal Court in Sydney has dismissed Australian special forces veteran Ben Robert Smith's appeal to have a multi-million-dollar defamation loss overturned.

Mr Roberts-Smith sued in 2023 over a series of articles published five years earlier about allegations of war crimes in Afghanistan, bullying and domestic violence against a woman in Canberra.

In late March, his lawyers began an eleventh-hour bid to add a further ground of appeal by arguing there was a miscarriage of justice in the original trial.

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[-] MisterFrog@aussie.zone 4 points 6 days ago

This travesty is that he's not been prosecuted for murdering people/war crimes (allegedly)

[-] rcbrk@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 week ago

"Having carefully considered all these matters, we are unanimously of the opinion that the evidence was sufficiently cogent to support the findings that the appellant murdered four Afghan men and to the extent that we have discerned error in the reasons of the primary judge, the errors were inconsequential," an executive summary from the court said.

[-] imoldgreeeg@aussie.zone 5 points 1 week ago

Oh well... anyway...

[-] No1@aussie.zone 1 points 1 week ago

Outrageous!

Surely he can keep appealing until he gets the answer he wants?

[-] maniacalmanicmania@aussie.zone 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

As a war criminal he can't profit off of his Breaker Morant sequel script until he gets a more favourable verdict.

this post was submitted on 16 May 2025
29 points (100.0% liked)

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