(Image: Private Media)

As the Taliban steadily advance on the Afghan capital Kabul, many residents are attempting to flee. But one group of men are remaining because they are assisting three Australian media outlets with a multimillion-dollar court case. 

Four Afghan villagers have travelled from the southern province of Uruzgan to Kabul to meet with their lawyers and give evidence via video-link in the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation hearing.

It is a logistical nightmare — telecommunications and even electricity are problematic — and the only available court-approved Pashto interpreter is in Ontario, Canada. When court starts in Sydney, it’s 4.45am in Kabul and 8.15pm for the interpreter; cross-examination is proving to be very challenging. 

Roberts-Smith, the former SAS soldier, is suing The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Canberra Times over a series of reports which he says depicted him as a war criminal and a murderer. There is a separate action over a story which said that he hit his then-mistress in the face. He denies all the allegations, and the newspapers are relying on the defence of truth.

In another development, the SMH and The Age published a photo yesterday of Roberts-Smith in combat uniform in Afghanistan in 2010 wearing a controversial “crusader’s cross” badge. The paper said that when the photo was released by the Defence Department when he received the Victoria Cross, the cross had been digitally removed. 

Roberts-Smith has also been seen in public in Australia wearing a T-shirt with the red Christian cross on it, most recently on a weekend in Sydney on June 13 when he was photographed by the Daily Mail Online in Sydney’s Barangaroo area, going to bars and restaurants with his girlfriend.   

Displaying the crusader’s symbol around Muslims is considered offensive because it references the Crusades of the 11th and 12th centuries, in which Christian armies captured large sections of the Middle East from Muslim control. 

Australia Defence Association executive director Neil James was reported as saying that displaying the symbol was “wrong morally” and “counterproductive”. 

The first Afghan villager, Mohammed Hanifa, commenced his testimony yesterday. He is a farmer from Darwan, a small village in southern Afghanistan. The four witnesses are being questioned about the alleged murder of an Afghan villager called Ali Jan in 2013. Roberts-Smith has previously told the court the suggestion that he and another soldier dragged Ali Jan across a creek bed into a cornfield and shot him was “completely false”.

The two-metre-tall former soldier has also denied claims that he interrogated and assaulted the man before kicking him off a cliff. 

Yesterday Hanifa, the step-nephew of Ali Jan, told the court that he saw a “big soldier” kick a member of his family off a cliff before the man was shot dead and an object associated with the Taliban planted near his body.

Hanifa said that on the day of Ali Jan’s death foreign soldiers arrived by helicopter in Darwan. The court heard the three men were questioned by an interpreter travelling with the soldiers about whether they had links to the Taliban. Hanifa said he was told by the interpreter: “You are a Talib. I shot your father. Show me [Taliban sympathiser] Hekmatullah, otherwise, I will shoot you in your head.”

 Hanifa said he was punched “many times” by a big soldier, who told him not to look at the interpreter. After this, the soldier kicked the handcuffed Ali Jan, sending him “rolling down” a cliff.

“At this time, I really got scared,” Hanifa said.

After this, the “big soldier” shouted something and he heard the sound of a shot. The soldier then “disappeared” and he saw other soldiers drag Ali Jan to a berry tree before he heard more shots.

According to Australian rules of engagement, a person under the control of Australian troops cannot be killed, and to kill a person in these circumstances is murder.

Under questioning by Bruce McClintock SC for Roberts-Smith, Hanifa agreed that he did not see any shots fired, but he had heard them: “I told you that I saw Ali Jan being dragged to those trees. After that, I didn’t see him. Shots were fired. Whether you consider this a lie or a truth, that’s up to you. I didn’t say that the big soldier fired shots.”

McClintock asked Hanifa about the Australian soldiers: “You regard them as infidels, don’t you?”. Hanifa replied: “Yes, brother, it is like that.”

He agreed with McClintock that the local people did not like the soldiers and that they regarded people killed by them as “martyrs”.

The hearing will continue all this week. 

This article was amended at 4 pm on July 27.