Mr Roberts-Smith also says one of the articles portrays him as a "hypocrite who publicly supported Rosie Batty, a domestic violence campaigner, when in private he abused a woman". Rosie Batty, having just been announced as 2015 Australian of the Year, with Ben Roberts-Smith, then Chair of the National Australia Day Council. Credit:David Flannery In a written defence to his claim, filed in the Federal Court and released publicly on Friday, Fairfax says the articles do not convey the defamatory imputations pleaded by Mr Roberts-Smith and that he is not identifiable in some of the articles. However, if the Federal Court finds the articles did identify and defame him, Fairfax has pleaded a defence of truth to all of the claims. A former soldier and member of the Special Air Service Regiment (SAS), Mr Roberts-Smith was deployed to Afghanistan six times between 2006 and 2012.

In a statement, he said the defence filed by Fairfax was "baseless" and relied on "unfounded hearsay and gossip" to "compound" the injury to his reputation and make "even more hurtful and untrue allegations ... that Fairfax Media clearly hope will be reported by other media without question". He said that while the defence "purports to imply" that a list of 17 people, whose names have been redacted in the document, "will be witnesses in support of the Fairfax claims against me", he was "confident that witnesses who will be called in this case will say that Fairfax Media’s allegations are untrue". In support of its truth defence, Fairfax alleges Mr Roberts-Smith was involved in six unlawful killings in Afghanistan, including an alleged incident in 2012 in which he kicked Ali Jan, an unarmed and handcuffed Afghan man, off a cliff before directing a soldier under his command to shoot him. The defence says each of the killings contravened the Geneva Convention, which is intended to protect civilians and detainees in war zones, and therefore constitute murder. Fairfax also alleges Mr Roberts-Smith was involved in five assaults, three involving unarmed Afghan men and two involving colleagues, as well as bullying two colleagues and assaulting an unnamed woman with whom he was having an extra-marital affair.

Fairfax Media has previously reported Mr Roberts-Smith is one of a small group of soldiers subject to a secret inquiry into the actions of Australian special forces soldiers in Afghanistan. The inquiry by the Inspector-General of the Defence Force is being led by NSW Supreme Court Justice and Major-General Paul Brereton at the request of military chief Lieutenant General Angus Campbell, and has interviewed more than 200 people. Mr Roberts-Smith said he had "not been requested to provide an interview by any investigative authority, either Police or the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force" and he "welcome[d] the chance to clear my name in due course". In documents filed in court, lawyers for Mr Roberts-Smith say the articles in the Fairfax press convey a string of defamatory imputations about him, including that he killed Ali Jan, "an unarmed and defenceless Afghan civilian"; pressured an inexperienced SAS soldier to murder an elderly, unarmed Afghan to "blood the rookie"; and committed another murder himself by "machine gunning a man with a prosthetic leg". Ben Roberts-Smith speaks on Anzac Day, 2017 in Melbourne. Credit:AAP

The statement of claim goes on to allege Fairfax painted Mr Roberts-Smith as a man "so callous and inhumane" that he brought the prosthetic leg back to Australia to use as a novelty beer drinking vessel. The stories were written by journalists Nick McKenzie, Chris Masters and David Wroe, who are being pursued by Mr Roberts-Smith alongside Fairfax. In their written defence, Fairfax and all three journalists say those allegations are defensible on the basis they are substantially true, and offer a series of particulars in support of their defence. The defence also says Mr Roberts-Smith had an extra-marital affair with a woman, who is not named in the defence, between October 2017 and April this year and took her as his guest to an event at Parliament House in Canberra on March 28. Fairfax says the pair had a fight after the function at Hotel Realm in Canberra because Mr Roberts-Smith was annoyed at her behaviour, including tripping over while intoxicated, and feared she may have exposed the affair. During that argument, the defence alleges, Mr Roberts-Smith punched the woman "hard in her left eye with a clenched right fist", leaving her with a black eye.

While some media outlets have reported Mr Roberts-Smith was cleared of the alleged incident by ACT Policing, who said in a letter to his lawyers there was "insufficient evidence to support any prosecution", Fairfax says the unnamed woman decided in August this year "she did not wish to proceed with a formal complaint" to the Australian Federal Police. She did so "after seeking legal advice about the process of being involved in a criminal prosecution as a witness", the defence says. The defence also details a series of alleged murders committed by Mr Roberts-Smith directly or at his instruction, including an incident in late 2012 in which he allegedly shot at close range an unarmed Afghan man hiding among rocks in a village called Darwan, and a separate incident in which he allegedly shot an Afghan adolescent aged between 15 and 18 in the head with a 9mm handgun. The defence says that if Mr Roberts-Smith succeeds in any part of his case, the Federal Court should consider in mitigation of any damages payout his "general bad reputation" within the SAS and the Australian Defence Force. This included his alleged reputation within those organisations as a "bully" and a "hypocrite" who "held himself out publicly in a manner not consistent with how he conducted himself" within the SAS, and who was "not deserving of the good reputation he enjoyed publicly". Mr Roberts-Smith has strenuously denied the allegations and said the defence filed by Fairfax "goes well beyond what was actually written in its original stories" and "adds damaging new claims, clearly intended for media consumption, that are demonstrably different from what was originally alleged in its original publication".