claim the man with the prosthetic leg was machine-gunned by a soldier that, for legal reasons, Fairfax Media will call "Leonidas". In para 12 of the newspaper article and para 15 of the online article, there is a statement that Leonidas "is also implicated" in the killing of a detainee three years later in September 2012 during a SASR mission in the village of Darwan. The applicant places emphasis on the words "is also implicated".
46 The applicant referred to the statement in para 14 of the newspaper article and para 17 of the online article to the effect that the allegations which have circulated among insiders for years, have now been corroborated by various sources across the globe during a six-month Fairfax Media investigation. The applicant submits that the references to the length of the investigation, multiple sources, corroboration and insiders all point to an imputation that the matters stated in the article are true. The applicant submits that his involvement in the execution of the elderly unarmed Afghan is made clear by the references to "fellow higher ranking soldiers", "two more senior soldiers", the references to "a rogue SASR team" operating in Afghanistan and the references to Leonidas machine gunning the man with the prosthetic leg and also being implicated in the killing of a detainee three years later in Darwan. The applicant submits that it is clear that it is being said that Leonidas is part of the rogue SASR rogue team and he is a senior member of that team. In all the circumstances, the ordinary reasonable reader would conclude that one of the "fellow higher ranking soldiers" who pressured the trooper on his first deployment to Afghanistan to execute the elderly, unarmed detainee was Leonidas.
47 The respondents submit that Imputation 4 is not conveyed or communicated by the Group 2 articles. Leonidas is said to have machine-gunned the man with the prosthetic leg and to be implicated in the killing of the man at Darwan. The respondents submit that, in those circumstances, the ordinary reasonable reader would assume that if it was being claimed that Leonidas was involved in the incident involving the elderly detainee, then he would have been mentioned. There is reference to "fellow higher-ranking soldiers", "a rogue SASR team" and "two more senior soldiers". The respondents submit that the ordinary reasonable reader would not conclude that "Leonidas" was one of the two unnamed "higher-ranking soldiers" involved in the blooding murder. The respondents submit that at best, the ordinary reasonable reader would consider that there were reasonable grounds to suspect that Leonidas committed murder by pressuring a newly deployed and inexperienced SASR soldier to execute an elderly, unarmed Afghan in order to "blood the rookie".
