MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) – An Australian judge on Tuesday sentenced a former military lawyer to nearly six years in prison for leaking classified information to the media that exposed Australia's alleged war crimes in Afghanistan.
david mcbride, 60, was sentenced to five years and eight months in prison after pleading guilty in a court in the capital, Canberra, to three charges, including theft of classified documents and sharing them with the press. He faced the possibility of life in prison.
Judge David Mossop ordered McBride to serve 27 months in prison before being considered for parole.
Rights activists say Mr McBride's conviction and sentencing in front of the suspected war criminals he helped expose reflects the lack of whistleblower protection in Australia. .
Mr McBride addressed his supporters as he walked his dog to the main entrance of the Australian Capital Territory Supreme Court to be sentenced.
“I have never been more proud to be an Australian than I am today. I may have broken the law, but I did not break my oath to the Australian people and the soldiers who keep us safe.” McBride told the cheering crowd.
Mr McBride's lawyer, Mark Davis, said his defense team would appeal the ruling that prevented Mr McBride from defending his case. Mr Mossop ruled in November last year that Mr McBride had no duty as a soldier other than to follow his orders.
“We know that the Australian military teaches a much broader concept of an officer's duty on the battlefield than following orders,” Mr Davis said.
Davis said the severity of the sentence also provides grounds for appeal, but he will focus his efforts on the earlier verdict.
Mr McBride's dossier was published in a seven-part television series produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2017, which included allegations of war crimes, including the killing of unarmed Afghan men and children by soldiers from the Australian Special Aviation Regiment in 2013. became the basis of
Police raided the ABC's Sydney headquarters in 2019 for evidence of the breach but decided not to press charges. two reporters The person in charge of the investigation.
At sentencing, Mr Mossop said he did not accept Mr McBride's explanation that he believed the court would vindicate him for acting in the public interest.
Mr Mossop said Mr McBride's claim that he was required to disclose classified documents due to allegations that senior Australian Defense Force officials were involved in criminal activity “does not reflect reality”.
australian army report A report released in 2020 found evidence that Australian troops illegally killed 39 Afghan prisoners of war, farmers and civilians. The report recommended that 19 current and former soldiers face criminal investigation.
Police are working with the Office of Special Investigations, an Australian investigative agency established in 2021, to develop cases against soldiers from the elite SAS and Commando regiments who served in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016.
Former SAS member Oliver Schultz Last year, he became the first of these veterans to be indicted for war crimes. He is accused of fatally shooting a non-combatant in a wheat field in Uruzgan province in 2012.
Also last year, a civil court convicted Australia's most decorated living war veteran. Ben Roberts-Smith Possibly illegally killed four Afghans. He has not been charged criminally.
Daniela Gavuchon, Australia director at Human Rights Watch, said the McBride decision was evidence that Australia's whistleblower laws required immunity in the public interest.
“It is a stain on Australia's reputation that some soldiers have been charged with war crimes in Afghanistan, but the perpetrators are the first to be convicted in connection with these crimes,” Mr Gabuchon said in a statement. not a whistleblower.”
“David McBride’s prison sentence confirms that whistleblowers are not protected by Australian law. “It will bring,” she added.
Some small parties and independents raised Mr McBride's sentence in Parliament on Tuesday.
Green Party MP Elizabeth Watson-Brown told Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that Mr McBride had been jailed for “telling the truth about war crimes”.
“Why won't the government admit that whistleblowing laws are being broken and work on urgent reforms to keep whistleblowers like Mr McBride out of prison?” Ms Watson-Brown asked the Prime Minister. .
Mr. Albanese declined to answer, saying it could jeopardize Mr. McBride's appeal.
“I'm not going to say anything here that will interfere with the issues that will obviously continue to be challenged in court,” Albanese told parliament.
andrew wilkieThe former government intelligence analyst whistleblower and now independent MP said the Australian government “hates whistleblowers”.
“The government wanted to punish David McBride and send a signal to other insiders to stay inside and be silent,” Wilkie said.
Wilkie quit his intelligence job at the Australian Bureau of Citizenship just days before Australian troops joined US and British troops in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He publicly argued that Iraq was not a threat enough to warrant invasion and that there was no evidence linking the Iraqi government to al-Qaeda.