{"id":401061,"date":"2026-04-07T18:02:46","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T08:02:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=401061"},"modified":"2026-04-07T18:02:47","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T08:02:47","slug":"victoria-cross-hero-ben-roberts-smith-arrested-on-war-crimes-charges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=401061","title":{"rendered":"Victoria Cross Hero Ben Roberts-Smith Arrested on War Crimes Charges"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The 47-year-old former SAS corporal was detained Tuesday by Australian Federal Police on five counts of war crime murder, linked to unarmed Afghan nationals killed between 2009 and 2012 while under Australian control. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The charges follow a joint probe sparked by the 2020 Brereton Report and a 2023 court ruling that upheld media claims of his involvement in murders. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Each count carries a potential life sentence; he denies wrongdoing amid divided reactions from politicians and veterans stressing accountability and military respect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The charges follow a joint probe sparked by the 2020 Brereton Report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":401066,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[273,999,35],"tags":[16758],"class_list":["post-401061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia","category-australia-politics","category-breaking-news","tag-ben-roberts-smith"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=401061"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":401067,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401061\/revisions\/401067"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/401066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=401061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=401061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=401061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}