Justice Besanko to rule on defamation case

While we wait for Justice Anthony Besanko's judgment, let's recap what this case is all about.

The case is about whether three papers in Sydney Morning Herald, the Age and the Canberra Times defame Ben Roberts-Smith in a series of articles published in 2018.

Roberts-Smith filed the lawsuit in the federal court alleging that the articles made 14 defamatory imputations against him.

The papers defended that he killed an unarmed and defenceless Afghan civilian by kicking him off a cliff and seeking the soldiers under his command to shoot him and committed murder by machine gunning a man with a prosthetic leg. They relied on a truth defence, meaning they were required to prove the truth of the defamatory imputations in their articles.

The trial, which lasted 110 days, ended in July last year. The judge, Justice Besanko, has been deliberating on his judgment in the time since, and will deliver it today at 2.15 p.m.

My colleagues Ben Doherty and his colleague Ben Doherty have prepared this useful explainer of the case.