Updated ,first published
Accused war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith has arrived at a beachside dawn service on the southern Gold Coast, adorned in medals received for his service in Afghanistan.
Roberts-Smith, who is currently on bail facing war crime charges he has denied, arrived to the Currumbin service at about 4.30am on Saturday wearing a suit.
Hundreds of service personnel and veterans filled rows of temporary seats in the car park below Elephant Rock on Currumbin Beach, with thousands of attendees lining the street above and the sand along the beach on either side of the service.
Roberts-Smith arrived silently, with little fanfare. He walked through a crowd and directly to a seat a number of rows back from the stage.
“Anzac Day is sacred to me and every other veteran. I will be attending to pay my respects and I encourage everyone else to,” Roberts-Smith said in a statement reported by the ABC and other media outlets.
An RSL Australia spokesman had said Roberts-Smith could attend Anzac Day commemorations “as a service veteran, and like any member of the community”.
RSL Australia national president Peter Tinley said in a statement the organisation existed to serve all veterans and their families.
“Our responsibility is not only to honour the fallen, but to fiercely advocate for and support the living,” he said.
“Thousands of Anzac Day services will take place across the nation. Whether people attend a dawn service, attend a march, pause at home in quiet reflection, or share stories with family and friends, every act of remembrance matters.
“No matter how people commemorate, RSL Australia asks only that they do.”
Roberts-Smith, a decorated SAS soldier, was arrested following a five-year investigation by the secretive Office of the Special Investigator, a team of experienced state and federal police detectives set up in 2021 to investigate the involvement of Australian troops in alleged war crimes in Afghanistan. The charged offences carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
Roberts-Smith has been allowed to live in Queensland after being released on bail from Sydney’s Silverwater jail. He is awaiting trial on five counts of the war crime of murder.
Roberts-Smith spent 10 days in custody after his “deliberately sensational arrest” on charges he “categorically denies”, he said on Sunday.
His bail conditions require him to report to police three times a week, surrender his passport and not contact prosecution witnesses.
Roberts-Smith has already unsuccessfully contested allegations he committed war crimes, including murders, in a defamation case he fought all the way to the High Court. The criminal charges he now faces have a higher burden of proof for the prosecution to succeed.
Court documents released after the bail hearing reveal prosecutors will allege five people killed by, or on the orders of, the decorated soldier had been unarmed and handcuffed, and evidence was then staged to portray their deaths as legal.
Lawyers for Roberts-Smith also told the ABC the former SAS soldier and his family were not involved in a rally “for” him, or associated with its organisers, being promoted in Melbourne on Sunday.
This masthead has also attempted to contact Roberts-Smith’s lawyers for comment.
The rally planned outside Parliament House in Melbourne is being promoted by a group that has previously backed marches against “mass migration” and described neo-Nazi figure Joel Davis and another man jailed for inciting racial hatred as “political prisoners”.
The group stipulates “Australian flags only” at the rally, which had earlier been postponed “following consultation with the family of Ben Roberts-Smith”, a claim contested by his lawyers.
James Hall is the News Director at the Brisbane Times. He is the former Queensland correspondent at The Australian Financial Review and has reported for a range of mastheads across the country, specialising on political and finance reporting.Connect via X or email.
Jack Gramenz is a breaking news reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.
