Secret plan to sneak Ben Roberts-Smith out back exit of Sydney prison

Corrective Services NSW staff devised a plan to sneak accused war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith out the back exit of a Sydney prison to avoid a waiting media pack after being granted bail, documents obtained under freedom of information laws reveal.

NSW Corrections considered the former Special Air Service soldier the most prominent high-profile protection inmate they had ever encountered, triggering a series of rare interventions, including a personal escort for Roberts-Smith and his partner, the use of a rear exit, and the intervention of one of its managers to ensure he received his daily exercise.

The cache of documents, obtained by this masthead using freedom of information laws, reveal that Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre governor Patrick Aboud personally escorted Roberts-Smith from Silverwater Correctional Complex on April 17, joining a convoy of cars that later tried to block media from photographing the disgraced former soldier.

Officers had initially planned to escort Roberts-Smith and his partner, Sarah Matulin, to the rear gate of the facility before Aboud directed them to travel in convoy with him along a public road. In a briefing note sent four days after Roberts-Smith was bailed, Aboud said senior staff had undertaken a “dynamic operational risk assessment” on the day to determine the “safest and most appropriate method of release”.

But internal department communications reveal Aboud, who also personally escorted Roberts-Smith into his cell after he was remanded in custody on five counts of war crime – murder over the alleged killing of unarmed Afghan detainees, approved a plan allowing the former Special Air Service corporal to leave via a back exit more than 24 hours before he was granted bail.

“Media obviously won’t be told that he’s leaving via the back entrance,” a senior member of Corrective Services NSW’s media unit wrote in an email to Aboud on April 16.

Roberts-Smith’s prison exit sparked chaotic scenes as Corrective Services NSW officers tried to block media outlets from photographing the 47-year-old. As Roberts-Smith’s vehicle travelled along a public road bordering the prison, a black ute that had exited Silverwater behind him veered into the path of the Herald’s moving vehicle, blocking it.

Two female Security Operations Group officers “temporarily exited their vehicles to impede media access and prevent interaction with the release inmate”, a review into the officers’ actions found. Aboud was in one of several vehicles that escorted Roberts-Smith from the prison, having personally seen him into the Audi being dr