Ben Roberts-Smith defamation trial: ‘I believed something unlawful had happened’, Andrew Hastie says
Assistant defence minister tells court he was troubled by warrior culture' in elite SAS regiment when he and Roberts-Smith were comrades in Afghanistan
Australia's Special Air Service regiment was riven by a culture war" with one faction obsessed by a pagan warrior ethos" where killing was a sacrament in itself", the assistant defence minister, Andrew Hastie, has told Ben Roberts-Smith's defamation trial.
Hastie, a former SAS officer who resigned from the military when he was preselected to run for parliament, has been subpoenaed to give evidence by three newspapers defending a defamation action brought by his former comrade and Victoria Cross recipient Roberts-Smith.
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