Former Australian Army lawyer David McBride has been sentenced to five years and eight months for revealing information about alleged Australian war crimes in Afghanistan.
McBride’s supporters have long expressed concern that the Australian government is more interested in punishing him for revealing information about war crimes than the alleged perpetrators.
“It is a travesty that the first person arrested in relation to Australia’s war crimes in Afghanistan is not a war criminal but a whistleblower,” said Rawan Arraf, executive director of the Australian Center for International Justice, in a statement released after the sentencing. . .
“This is a dark day for Australian democracy,” Kieran Pender, acting legal director of the Melbourne-based Human Rights Law Center, said in the same statement, noting that McBride’s arrest would have “a serious chilling effect on potential accountants of the true”. .
McBride, who arrived at the High Court in Canberra, Australia this morning with his pet dog and surrounded by supporters, will remain behind bars until at least August 13, 2026, before being eligible for parole.
In an interview with Al Jazeera before the start of his trial last year, McBride said he never hid the sharing of the files.
“What I want to discuss is whether or not I was justified in doing so,” McBride emphasized.
The former Australian Army lawyer’s sentencing comes almost seven years after Australia’s public broadcaster, ABC, published a series of seven articles known as the Afghan Files, based on information provided by McBride.
The series led to an unprecedented Australian Federal Police raid on ABC headquarters in June 2019, but details published in the series were also later confirmed in an Australian government inquiry, which found there was credible evidence to support allegations of war crimes committed.
A spokesperson for the Office of the Special Investigator (OSI) told Al Jazeera that a former Australian Special Forces soldier who was charged with one war crime count of murder on March 20, 2023, is out on bail with a mention for July 2nd. , 2024.
“This is the first arrest for war crimes resulting from [joint investigations between the Office of the Special Investigator (OSI) and the Australian Federal Police],” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson also said the investigations were “very complex” and “expected to take a significant amount of time” but that they were conducting them as “thoroughly and quickly as possible”.
In a separate case last year, an Australian judge concluded that Australia’s most decorated soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith, was “complicit in and responsible for the murder” of three Afghan men while on deployment. The finding was made as part of a defamation case brought by Roberts-Smith against three Australian newspapers that reported the allegations against him.
Roberts-Smith appealed the defamation decision.
‘Grayer, darker, messier’
McBride’s sentencing comes four months after Dan Oakes, one of two ABC journalists who wrote the Afghan Files, was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia, with the citation simply saying he was recognized “for services to journalism ”.
Oakes was quoted by the ABC at the time as saying: “I’m very proud of the work we did with the Afghan Archives and I know it has had a positive effect as it has helped to bring some of this conduct to light.
“If [this medal] is at least in part due to this report, so I feel some sense of satisfaction.”
But Oakes, who reportedly hasn’t spoken to McBride in six years, later told ABC’s Four Corners program that the story was “a lot grayer and darker and messier than people realize.”
Although Oakes and McBride were not in contact, the whistleblower attracted support from a wide range of Australians, including human rights lawyers, senators and journalists.
On Tuesday, supporters gathered outside the courthouse, with speakers on McBride’s behalf including Australian Greens senator David Shoebridge.
It would be “an indelible stain on the Albanian Labor government” if McBride “walked into the Supreme Court this morning” and was “taken to prison”, Shoebridge said before the sentencing hearing.
In a joint statement from several Australians issued after the hearing, Peter Greste, executive director of the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom, said “press freedom depends on the protection of journalists and their sources”. He also noted that Australia recently fell to 39th place in the global press freedom rankings.
Greste is a former Al Jazeera reporter who was arrested with two colleagues in Egypt from 2013 to 2015 on national security charges brought by the Egyptian government.
“As someone who was wrongfully imprisoned for my journalism in Egypt, I am outraged by the sentencing of David McBride on this sad day for Australia,” Greste said.
McBride is one of several Australians facing punishment for revealing information, while high-profile Australian Julian Assange will face hearings over his potential extradition from the UK to the US later this month.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
