Australia’s most decorated living veteran, Ben Roberts-Smith, faces war crime charges on allegations that he killed five unarmed Afghans while serving in Afghanistan from 2009 and 2012, police and media reported on Tuesday.

Police have not confirmed the name of the 47-year-old former soldier who was arrested on Tuesday. But he has been widely reported in the media to be Roberts-Smith, a former Special Air Service Regiment corporal who was awarded both the Victoria Cross and Medal of Gallantry for his service in Afghanistan.

He is expected to appear in a Sydney court late Tuesday or Wednesday, police said.

Roberts-Smith is only the second Australian veteran of the Afghanistan campaign to be charged with a war crime.

Former SAS soldier Oliver Schulz, 44, has pleaded not guilty to a charge of war crime murder. He is accused of shooting Afghan man Dad Mohammad three times in the head in an Uruzgan province wheatfield in May 2012.

War crime murder carries a potential sentence of life in prison. It’s a federal crime in Australia, defined as the intentional killing in the context of armed conflict of a person who is not taking an active part in hostilities, such as civilians, prisoners of war or wounded soldiers.

Police arrested Roberts-Smith at Sydney Airport on Tuesday after he arrived on a flight from Brisbane, Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett said.

“It will be alleged that the victims were not taking part in hostilities at the time of their alleged murder in Afghanistan. It will be alleged the victims were detained, unarmed and were under the control of ADF members when they were killed,” Barrett told reporters, referring to the Australian Defense Force.

“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,” Barrett added.

In September last year, Australia’s highest court removed Roberts-Smith’s last chance to clear his name of court findings that he unlawfully killed four Afghans.

The High Court said it would not hear his appeal against a federal judge’s civil court finding in 2023 that he likely killed noncombatants unlawfully in 2009 and 2012.

Three federal court judges had unanimously rejected his appeal against that ruling.

Roberts-Smith sued for defamation after several newspapers published articles in 2018 accusing him of a range of war crimes.

But while the civil courts found the war crimes allegations were mostly proven on a balance of probabilities, the new charges would have to be proved in a criminal court to a higher standard of beyond reasonable doubt.

The charges follow a military report released in 2020 that found evidence that elite Australian SAS and commando regiment troops unlawfully killed 39 Afghan prisoners, farmers and other noncombatants.

Barrett said few soldiers were involved in the new allegations.

“The alleged conduct related to these charges is confined to a very small section of our trusted and respected ADF which helps keep this country safe,” Barrett said.

“The overwhelming majority of our ADF do our country proud. Today’s charges are not reflective of the majority of members who serve under our Australian flag with honor, with distinction and with the values of a democratic nation,” she added.

The Office of the Special Investigator was established to work with police on the war crime allegations. The office’s director of investigations Ross Barnett said allegations of 53 war crimes had been investigated and 39 of those investigations had concluded without charges. Around 40,000 Australian military personnel served in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021, of whom 41 were killed.

Israel and the United States carried out a wave of attacks on Monday that killed more than 25 people in Iran.

Tehran responded with missile fire on Israel and its Gulf Arab neighbors as US President Donald Trump’s deadline for Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz loomed.

Explosions rang out into the night in Tehran and low-flying jets could be heard for hours as the capital was pounded. Thick black smoke rose near the city’s Azadi Square after one airstrike hit the Sharif University of Technology grounds.

Two people were found dead in the rubble of a residential building in Haifa, according to Israeli authorities. The search was ongoing for two more even as new Iranian missile attacks hit the northern Israel city early Monday.

Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates both activated their air defense systems to intercept incoming Iranian missiles and drones, as Tehran kept up the pressure on its Gulf neighbors. Iran’s regular attacks on regional energy infrastructure and its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil is shipped in peacetime, has sent global energy prices soaring.

Under pressure at home as consumers are growing increasingly concerned, Trump gave Tehran a deadline that expires Monday night, Washington time, saying if no deal was reached to reopen the strait the US would hit Iran’s power plants and other infrastructure targets and set the country “back to the stone ages.”

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran,” he threatened in a social media post, adding that if Iran did not open the strait “you’ll be living in Hell.”

Trump’s deadline to open Hormuz strait looms but no signs of Tehran backing off

Tehran has shown no signs of backing down off of its stranglehold on shipping through the strait, which was fully open before Israel and the US attacked Iran on Feb. 28 to start the war.

Following Trump’s expletive-laced posts on Easter Sunday, Iran’s parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf called the threats of targeting Iran’s infrastructure “reckless.”

“You won’t gain anything through war crimes,” Qalibaf wrote on X. “The only real solution is respecting the rights of the Iranian people and ending this dangerous game.”

Brent crude oil, the international standard, rose to $109 in early Monday spot trading, some 50% higher than it was when the war started.

Iran has let some vessels through the strait since the war began, but none belonging to the US, Israel or countries perceived as helping them. Some have paid Iran for passage and the overall flow of traffic is down more than 90% over the same period last year.

Beyond Trump’s military threats, diplomatic efforts are still underway to see if a solution can be reached to open the waterway.

Oman’s Foreign Ministry said that deputy foreign ministers and experts from Iran and Oman met to discuss proposals to ensure “smooth transit” through the strait.

Egypt said that Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty had spoken with US envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, and with Turkish and Pakistani counterparts. Russia said that Araghchi also spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Airstrikes kill more than 25 across Iran

One of Monday’s morning airstrikes targeted Tehran’s Sharif University of Technology, where Iranian media reported damage to the buildings as well as a natural gas distribution site next to the campus.

It wasn’t immediately clear what had been targeted on the grounds of the university, which is empty of students as the war has forced all schools into the country into online classes. However, multiple countries over the years have sanctioned the university for its work with the military, particularly on Iran’s ballistic missile program, which is controlled by the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.

A strike near Eslamshar, southwest of Tehran, killed at least 13 people, the semiofficial Fars news agency reported. Five others were killed when a residential area in the city of Qom was hit, and six more were killed in strikes on other cities, the state-run IRAN daily newspaper reported.

Three more people were killed when an airstrike hit a home in Tehran, Iranian state television reported.

War’s death toll in the thousands

More than 1,900 people have been killed in Iran since the war began, but its government has not updated the toll for days.

In Lebanon, which Israel has invaded by ground, more than 1,400 people have been killed and more than 1 million people have been displaced. Eleven Israeli soldiers have died there while targeting Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants.

In Gulf Arab states and the occupied West Bank, more than two dozen people have died, while 19 have been reported dead in Israel and 13 US service members have been killed.

The US rescued a missing F-15E airman deep inside Iran with an incredibly complex and daring mission that involved SEAL Team 6, a CIA ruse, a hastily constructed forward air strip in hostile territory and patrols of friendly aircraft that gave the Air Force colonel cover.

A life-or-death race between US and Iranian forces to find the “seriously injured” weapons officer outside Isfahan over two days culminated in the crew member’s extraction by America’s most elite commandos and a fire fight with local militias that were hunting for him, according to a report in the New York Times.

The unnamed officer hid out in the mountains and managed to climb a 7,000-foot ridge in order to evade capture while American MQ-9 Reaper drones pounded nearby Iranian forces with missiles if they got close to his position, according to reports.

“He evaded up a 7k ridge. They’ve been schwackin’ dudes chasing him all day. Was nuts,” a source told Toby Harnden, the veteran war correspond and author.

In an effort to confuse the Iranians, who put a $60,000 bounty (more than 10 times the average household income) on the officer’s head, the CIA pulled off a diversion — planting fake intel that he had already been rescued and was being driven out of Iran, according to the Times.

The operation involved landing multiple transport aircraft inside Iranian territory just south of the city of Isfahan, some 200 miles inside the country.

Two of the aircraft — believed to be MC-130J Commando IIs, specialized, high-tech transport planes, became stuck at the forward airfield in Iran — and three more aircraft were dispatched to pick up the US forces left stranded there, according to the Times.

The two MC-130Js — each worth around $100 million — were demolished in place so as not to fall into enemy hands.

Photos from Iran show the burned out wreckage of multiple aircraft, believed to be the planes.

There were no US deaths among the rescue team, and all the commandos and the weapons officer involved returned safety, a senior US military official said.

The injured airman has been flown to Kuwait for medical treatment in a rescue plane.

On Friday, the first of the two pilots was rescued during another daring operation.

“WE GOT HIM!” President Trump confirmed in a Truth Social post. “This brave Warrior was behind enemy lines in the treacherous mountains of Iran, being hunted down by our enemies, who were getting closer and closer by the hour.”

In a later post, he said, “this type of raid is seldom attempted because of the danger to ‘man and equipment.’”

The president said he would hold a news conference with the military at the Oval Office on Monday at 1:00 p.m. in the aftermath of the successful operation.

Vice President JD Vance joined the grieving family of a Kentucky man who was the seventh US service member to die in combat during the Iran war as his remains were brought back to the US Monday evening.

The dignified transfer, a solemn event that honors US service members killed in action, took place at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for Army Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington, 26, of Glendale, Kentucky. He died Sunday after being wounded during a March 1 attack on the Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, a Pentagon statement said.

Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth saluted alongside high ranking military officials as the transfer case draped with the American flag was carried from the military aircraft and into an awaiting vehicle.

Mike Bell, retired pastor of Glendale Christian Church, said he’d known Pennington since he was a toddler and got a call from Pennington’s father when the soldier was hurt.

“I talked to Tim Saturday morning, and he was doing a little better, and they were talking about maybe moving him to Germany,” Bell said. Tim Pennington called again that evening, Bell said, to ask for prayers as his son’s condition was worsening, and then later told him the soldier had succumbed to his injuries.

“He was just a quiet person,” said Bell, noting that Pennington attended the church’s after-school program. “I mean, he never attracted attention because he was just steady doing what he needed to do to do it.”

State and local officials grieve

Pennington was assigned to the 1st Space Battalion, 1st Space Brigade of the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command based at Fort Carson, Colorado.

The unit’s mission focused on “missile warning, GPS, and long-haul satellite communications,” according to their website.

“This just breaks my heart,” Keith Taul, judge-executive of Hardin County, where Pennington was from, said in a statement emailed to The Associated Press. “I have known the family for at least 30 years. I can’t imagine the pain and suffering they are experiencing.”

Glendale is an unincorporated town of about 300 residents south of the Hardin County seat of Elizabethtown.

In a statement posted on social media, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear called Pennington “a hero who sacrificed everything serving our country.”

Six other soldiers killed

The other six service members killed since the conflict began on Feb. 28 were Army reservists killed in Kuwait when an Iranian drone struck an operations center at a civilian port.

President Donald Trump on Saturday joined grieving families at Dover Air Force Base at the dignified transfer for those six US soldiers.

The dignified transfer is considered one of the most somber duties of any commander in chief. During his first term, Trump said bearing witness to the transfer was “the toughest thing I have to do” as president.

‘An American hero’

Pennington graduated in 2017 from Central Hardin High School, where he was enrolled in the automotive technology pathway, district spokesman John Wright told the AP. Former automotive tech instructor Tom Pitt, who taught Pennington in 2017 at Hardin County Early College and Career Center, called him “an American hero.”

“A lot of times as a teacher, you have students who are smart, you have students who are charismatic, who are likable, dare I say, enchanting,” said Pitt, who called Pennington Nate. “Rarely do you have students who are all of those. And Ben Pennington was all of those. He was basically the quintessential all-American.”

Photos on his and family members’ Facebook pages show that Pennington achieved the rank of Eagle Scout in August 2017. His Eagle project was the demolition of some old baseball dugouts in Glendale, said Darin Life, former committee chairman for Troop 221.

“If you look up Eagle Scout, his picture’s probably there,” said Life, who knew Pennington throughout his scouting career. “He loved his country. I would have expected nothing less of him than to lose his life protecting his country.”

Awards and decorations

A month after his Eagle ceremony, Pennington posted a photo of himself taking the oath of enlistment. He entered the service as a unit supply specialist and was assigned to the Space and Missile Command on June 10, 2025, the Army said in a release.

Among his awards and decorations were the Army Commendation Medal, Army Achievement Medal, Army Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and the Army Service Ribbon.

“The U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command is deeply saddened by the loss of Sgt. Pennington,” said Lt. Gen. Sean A. Gainey, USASMDC commanding general. “He gave the ultimate sacrifice for the country he loved.”

Col. Michael F. Dyer, 1st Space Brigade commander, described Pennington as “a dedicated and experienced noncommissioned officer who led with strength, professionalism and sense of duty.”

Pennington will be posthumously promoted to staff sergeant, the Pentagon said.