Australia’s most decorated living soldier Ben Roberts-Smith has admitted he nearly ended his own life after being accused of war crimes.

The 47-year-old former SAS soldier was arrested in April and charged with murdering or ordering the murders of five unarmed detainees while deployed in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012.

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The Victoria Cross recipient has maintained his innocence, emphatically denying the allegations in his first major interviews since the claims emerged publicly in 2018.

“I didn’t bloody murder anyone,” Roberts-Smith told 2GB host Ben Fordham in an interview that aired on Thursday.

In a series of rapid-fire questions, Roberts-Smith bluntly denied the accusations levelled against him.

“Did you shoot prisoners?” Fordham asked.

“No,” Roberts-Smith replied.

“Did you see anyone else shooting prisoners?”

“No.”

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Roberts-Smith denied the accusations levelled against him. Credit: 2GB

Roberts-Smith also opened up about the toll the allegations had taken on his mental health, revealing he had contemplated suicide over a period of several months.

“I thought it might be a better option for my family if I just took my own life,” he said. 

“Probably played out over about three to six months of thinking about that every day. That’s rock bottom.”

He also described his experience at Sydney’s Silverwater prison following his arrest, where he said he was strip-searched and placed in a cell with lights on around the clock because he was considered a suicide risk.

“I actually had a pair of underwear and I wrapped it around my head so I could sleep,” he said.

However, he said he ultimately decided against taking his own life because he viewed it as a form of surrender that would hand victory to his accusers.

Roberts-Smith said he lost 6kg during his 10 days in custody.

A Federal Court judge previously found Roberts-Smith was responsible for a number of killings in a blockbuster defamation trial against Nine newspapers.

Justice Anthony Besanko found Roberts-Smith machine-gunned an unarmed prisoner Mohammed Essa in the back during a 2009 raid on a compound codenamed Whiskey 108, taking the man’s prosthetic leg back to Australia to use as a beer drinking vessel.

Roberts-Smith arrives at the Downing Centre Court, in Sydney, Tuesday, June 16, 2026. Credit: Bianca De Marchi/AAP Image

But Roberts-Smith bluntly rejected allegations he drank from the prosthetic.

“I didn’t drink out of it, which is just the truth. I did not and that’s for personal reasons,” he told Fordham.

“The dark humour that ... military organisations rely upon to maintain their sanity will sometimes be misconstrued.”

Roberts-Smith is also accused of ordering the execution of Essa’s son Ahmadullah to give a “rookie” soldier experience during a raid at a compound in April 2009.

The then-SAS soldier allegedly placed firearms on the bodies to falsely claim they were armed enemy combatants, court documents said.

In August 2012, at the village of Darwan, Roberts-Smith is accused of kicking a handcuffed man named Ali Jan off a 10-metre cliff before ordering he be dragged to a creek bed and shot.

Two months later at Syahchow, he allegedly lined up two prisoners in a corn field before shooting one of them with another soldier.

Roberts-Smith is accused of machine-gunning Afghan prisoner Mohammed Essa and ordering the execution of his son Ahmadullah. Credit: 7NEWS

He ordered a subordinate to shoot the other prisoner before throwing a grenade on the bodies to cover up what he had done, prosecutors allege.

Roberts-Smith slammed the decade-long, $300 million investigation into alleged Australian war crimes in Afghanistan, describing it as “ludicrous”.

“So now you’re all guilty until you prove yourselves innocent, which is basically the way the community feels,” he said.

“And it broke a lot of men, mate, that inquiry. Some of that stuff led to people’s suicides.”

He even lashed out at the federal government for changing war crimes laws retrospectively and offering compensation to Afghan families before his trial had even begun.

“I think that’s a very dangerous mistake that they’ve made,” he said.

Former Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon was quick to lend his support to Roberts-Smith, ringing in to Fordham’s show to express his sympathies.

“What the system has done to him is an absolute disgrace,” the now-lobbyist said on Thursday.

Fitzgibbon criticised the lack of forensic weight attached to the allegations levelled against Roberts-Smith.

In the wide-ranging conversation conducted in Queensland on October 8, Roberts-Smith said he conducted himself professionally in the theatre of war.

“I wouldn’t change a single thing. I would do it all exactly the same way because I know that I did the right thing,” he said on Thursday.

“I know I did whatever I could to keep my mates alive.

“But I never broke the rules of engagement.”

At times emotional and choking back tears when discussing members of his battalion killed during service, the former SAS soldier insisted he did not partake in extrajudicial killings.

“I’ve never committed a war crime in my military career,” he said.

“I’ve never murdered a prisoner, and everything I did was inside the laws of armed conflict.”

- With AAP