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Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith at Remembrance Day commemorations at the Australian War Memorial last year.Credit:AAP

Sources with knowledge of the situation say the Victoria Cross recipient recently attended a police interview in Canberra and,as is standard practice,was cautioned that what he said could be used against him if he was ever criminally prosecuted. While the AFP does not comment on investigations,requesting to interview a subject normally comes near the end of an exhaustive probe and after critical witness statements have been collected.

About 90 minutes after Mr Roberts-Smith's lawyer,Mark O'Brien,was contacted byThe Age andHerald for comment,The Australian's defence writer Paul Maley quoted Mr Roberts-Smith confirming the police interview had taken place,and claiming he had volunteered for it.

In September,The Age andThe Sydney Morning Heraldrevealed that an AFP taskforce was investigating Mr Roberts-Smith over allegations he kicked a handcuffed and innocent detainee,Ali Jan,off a cliff in the village of Darwan in September 2012. The Darwan taskforce has obtained co-operation from SAS witnesses and support staff willing to testify on oath against the decorated soldier. Asecond police investigation is looking into allegations Mr Roberts-Smith is implicated in the summary execution of a man at a compound in southern Afghanistan in April 2009.

The Age andHerald are not suggesting Mr Roberts-Smith has been found guilty of any war crime,only that he is the subject of police probes sparked by allegations made by his SAS colleagues.

Mr Roberts-Smith is one of the most decorated veterans to have served with coalition forces in Afghanistan,has stridently denied all wrongdoing and has launched a defamation case againstThe Age andHerald for first uncovering and reporting the allegations made about him by his fellow soldiers.

While the AFP’s focus has for many months been on him,it is almost certainly going to open up a third probe into a different soldier from another SAS squadron. This follows the broadcast on the ABC’sFour Corners program of footage of an SAS 3 squadron soldier shooting an apparently unarmed and subdued Afghan in May 2012. That soldier was still active until last week,when he was stood down in the wake of that footage being aired.

Many more AFP probes could follow depending on the findings of a long-running military Inspector-General's inquiry into war crimes.

The organisation revealed in its recent annual report that Supreme Court of Appeal Judge Paul Brereton had,over four years,been probing multiple alleged executions involving SAS and Commandos.

Several of these cases are those reported over the last two years byThe Age and Herald,according to defence personnel.

They include a case involving the confession of a Commando who admitted to personally executing an Afghan prisoner and also witnessing other executions. Another case involves claims made in 2019 bySAS medic Dusty Miller that an injured prisoner was taken from his care and allegedly executed in March 2012.

Defence sources said that for the past two years,the Inspector-General has focused on allegations of war crimes involved the SAS’s 2 squadron. Mr Roberts-Smith is one of the 2 squadron members under investigation.

The release of the vision on ABC’sFour Cornersof an Afghan man being shot has spurred fresh inquires into the conduct of 3 squadron as well,according to defence sources. This has the potential to delay the imminent release of the Brereton report,despite increasing political pressure for the historic and likely damning inquiry to be completed.

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