Ben Roberts-Smith has launched a clothing label as he continues to deal with ongoing court and legal battles, saying the venture is intended to “make money for my family”.
The former SAS corporal and Victoria Cross recipient, 47, officially put the “Epic 1 Two” website online on Sunday. The brand takes its name from his military radio call sign.
The website says Epic 1 Two is a brand “forged in adversity”. Products on sale include t-shirts, hoodies and trucker hats, priced between $49 and $85, with a 10 per cent military discount also offered.
Roberts-Smith appears on the site modelling some of the items himself. One graphic t-shirt shows an image of Roberts-Smith in military gear on the back. Another features an image of Roberts-Smith during his arrest earlier this year.
“The day I was arrested and escorted onto the tarmac, I had no idea the images would capture three words emblazoned on the aircraft behind me. Spirit of Australia,” Roberts-Smith wrote in an email to website subscribers.
Before the full launch, Roberts-Smith gave little away about the project, apart from using the hashtags #underdog and #neveroutofthefight.
The former soldier is awaiting trial on five charges of war crime – murder. In April, he was taken off a plane at Sydney Airport and charged over the alleged murder of five people in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012.
He was granted bail in after spending nine days on remand at the Silverwater Correctional Complex. The case is expected to become the largest and most significant war crime prosecution in Australia’s history.
His arrest followed a joint investigation by the AFP and the Office of the Special Investigator into the Australian Defence Force that began in 2021.
That investigation came after Nine newspapers, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Canberra Times, published allegations in June 2018 about war crimes involving an anonymous SAS soldier referred to as “Leonidas”. In August, Roberts-Smith is named in reports after his lawyers unsuccessfully sought an injunction.
Roberts-Smith later brought defamation proceedings in the Federal Court against the publishers of The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Canberra Times. His case against Nine was dismissed after the judge found most of the war crimes and bullying allegations were substantially true, while a defence of contextual truth was accepted in a domestic violence allegation involving an unnamed woman.
The judge found, to the lesser civil standard of defamation law, that Roberts-Smith had killed four unarmed Afghan men and had broken the rules of military engagement. Nine is the publisher of this website.
Roberts-Smith has always denied any allegations of wrongdoing.
This is not his first business venture. After retiring as a full-time soldier in 2013, Roberts-Smith established his consultancy business, RS Group Australia.
