Australia's most decorated living soldier was arrested on the tarmac at Sydney Airport on Tuesday morning after extensive investigations into whether he murdered Afghans while deployed in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012.
The 47-year-old was charged on Tuesday afternoon with two counts of the war crime of murder and three counts of aiding or abetting the same war crime.
Australian Federal Police commissioner Krissy Barrett said the victims were not taking part in hostilities at the time of their alleged murder in the war zone.
"It will be alleged the victims were detained, unarmed and were under the control of ADF members when they were killed," she told reporters.
"It will be alleged the victims were shot by the accused or shot by subordinate members of the ADF in the presence of and acting on the orders of the accused."
The allegations include Roberts-Smith intentionally caused the death of two people in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012.
Asked if others were involved in those matters, the Office of the Special Investigator said investigations were ongoing.
Roberts-Smith is expected to appear in a NSW court on Wednesday morning.
Footage of Roberts-Smith's arrest showed him flanked by several police officers before being taken away by a waiting AFP car on the tarmac.
The Office of the Special Investigator, comprised of 54 investigators, launched an investigation into the soldier in 2021.
In collaboration with the AFP, it has launched 53 investigations involving allegations of war crimes by ADF members in Afghanistan, 39 of which have been provisionally finalised.
"The OSI has been tasked with investigating literally dozens of murders alleged to have been committed in the middle of a war zone in a country 9000 kilometres from Australia," OSI director Ross Barnett said.
"Because we can't go to that country.... we don't have access to the crime scenes... we don't have access to the deceased, there's no post-mortem... so it's a very challenging starting point for all these investigations."
Roberts-Smith will be the second Australian soldier to be charged with war crimes under domestic law after another ex-SAS soldier, Oliver Schulz, was charged in 2023 over the war crime of the 2012 murder of a young man in Afghanistan.
Schulz has maintained his innocence. His matter is yet to go to trial, but the case could provide a blueprint for Roberts-Smith.
A Federal Court judge previously found Roberts-Smith was responsible for a number of killings in a blockbuster defamation trial against Nine newspapers.
The articles were published in 2018 and the alleged war criminal has maintained his innocence.
Justice Anthony Besanko's findings were on the balance of probabilities, rather than the criminal standard of beyond reasonable doubt.
Justice Besanko found Roberts-Smith machine-gunned an unarmed prisoner in the back, taking the man's prosthetic leg back to Australia to use as a beer drinking vessel, during a 2009 raid on a compound codenamed Whiskey 108.
He also found one of the newspapers' central claims - that Mr Roberts-Smith had kicked an unarmed and handcuffed man, Ali Jan, off a 10-metre cliff and then ensured he was shot - was true.
News of the arrest was welcomed by human rights groups, who called for Afghan witnesses to be given a voice during any criminal proceedings.
"We continue to call on the Australian government to consider other meaningful forms of reparations following consultation with Afghan victims," Australian Centre for International Justice executive director Rawan Arraf said.
Amnesty International Australia said the charges were a critical step for accountability and justice for Afghan communities.
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