Mr Moses appears to be referring to an article published in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald revealing that the Department of Defence had altered an image of Mr Roberts-Smith, taken in combat in Afghanistan, in which he is pictured wearing a Crusader’s cross emblem on his uniform. A defence expert and a spokesman for Australia’s Muslim community described a soldier wearing that symbol in a war in a Muslim majority country as “dumb,” “offensive,” “counterproductive” and “wrong morally”.

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Mr Moses said the trial should resume by November 1 to hear from witnesses located in Australia. He said that completing 14 days’ quarantine in Sydney may be the “price” interstate witnesses had to pay “for coming along to give evidence”.

The court has heard a number of witnesses are located in Western Australia, where the Special Air Service is based.

But Nicholas Owens, SC, acting for the newspapers, said that if some of their witnesses could not give evidence in Sydney in November “we will thereby be denied a fair trial”.

“That’s an argument for another time,” he said.

A firm date for the resumption of the trial later this year has yet to be set. The evidence of the Afghan witnesses continued on Wednesday, and is expected to run for a week.

Mr Roberts-Smith is suing The Age, the Herald and The Canberra Times over a series of stories starting in June 2018 that he alleges accuse him of war crimes and an act of domestic violence against a woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair. He denies all wrongdoing. The media outlets are seeking to rely on a defence of truth.