4 days ago
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Updated April 25, 2026 — 8:22am,first published 6:51pm
Ben Roberts-Smith was swarmed by supporters after attending a beachside dawn service on the southern Gold Coast, where the accused war criminal sat in the rain adorned in medals received from serving in Afghanistan.
Roberts-Smith, who is currently on bail facing war crime charges he has denied, arrived at the Currumbin Anzac Day service wearing a suit at about 4.30am to little fanfare alongside girlfriend Sarah Matulin.
He sat a number of rows back from the stage with family among service personnel and veterans 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.
Roberts-Smith did not lay a wreath during the service and there was no direct mention during formalities of the Victoria Cross recipient.
But the towering figure was mobbed by supporters after the sun poked through damp clouds when the service concluded, many thanking Roberts-Smith for his service while one older gentleman told him to “keep fighting, mate”.
Roberts-Smith described the attention at the South-east Queensland beach as “overwhelming”.
“It’s a day that everyone should be reflecting and commemorating the service of all those Australians that have given us the country that we live in,” he told media.
“We should never forget their sacrifice because it is enduring – they [families who have lost loved ones at war] think about that every day.”
When asked if he had considered not attending a dawn service given the spotlight and the accusations he’s facing, Roberts-Smith said: “I never thought about not coming, I was always going to be here.”
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.
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.
He 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.
Read more on Ben Roberts-Smith’s arrest:
