{"id":404674,"date":"2026-04-13T13:46:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T03:46:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=404674"},"modified":"2026-04-13T13:46:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T03:46:22","slug":"ben-roberts-smith-faces-war-crimes-trial-with-two-unidentified-victims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=404674","title":{"rendered":"Ben Roberts-Smith Faces War Crimes Trial with Two Unidentified Victims"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Charged with five counts of war crime murder for deaths of unarmed detainees in Uruzgan Province between 2009 and 2012, Roberts-Smith knows prosecutors lack bodies, crime scene access, or forensic links due to Taliban control. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Three victims are named\u2014Mohammed Essa, Ahmadullah, and Ali Jan\u2014but the other two from a 2012 mission are simply &#8220;Person Under Control 1&#8221; and &#8220;Person Under Control 2.&#8221; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Supporters highlight these evidence gaps as barriers to conviction beyond reasonable doubt, while a costly $318 million investigation and public backlash, including from Elon Musk, underscore the case&#8217;s tensions amid his Victoria Cross heroism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Three victims are named\u2014Mohammed Essa, Ahmadullah, and Ali Jan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":401066,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":true,"_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":[1597,273,35],"tags":[16758,20072],"class_list":["post-404674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-australia","category-breaking-news","tag-ben-roberts-smith","tag-uruzgan-province"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404674","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\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=404674"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":404675,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404674\/revisions\/404675"}],"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=404674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=404674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=404674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}