David McBride: Australian army whistleblower jailed for leaking documents

A whistleblower who helped expose allegations of Australian war crimes in Afghanistan has been sentenced to five years and eight months in prison.

David McBride pleaded guilty to stealing and sharing military secrets on the eve of his trial last year, after court rulings derailed his defense.

A former military lawyer, McBride said he felt a moral duty to speak out.

A landmark investigation later found Australian forces unlawfully killed 39 Afghans during the war.

The McBride case has sparked outcry in Australia, highlighting what some see as weak protections for whistleblowers and slow progress in prosecuting soldiers suspected of killing with impunity under its flag.

McBride, 60, admits providing a trove of documents to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), saying he was concerned about the attitude of commanders and what he then believed was an “excessive investigation” into troops, a the court learned.

But instead, the information he provided underpinned a series of reports in 2017 called The Afghan Files, which gave an unprecedented insight into the operations of Australia’s elite special forces in Afghanistan and contained allegations of crimes of war.

Prosecutors argued that McBride was motivated by “personal justification” and that the manner in which he collected, stored and then disclosed the documents endangered Australia’s national security and foreign policy.

But McBride’s lawyers asked for leniency, saying he shared the information with “honorable” intentions and out of a sense of personal duty.

At sentencing in the nation’s capital on Tuesday, Judge David Mossop acknowledged that McBride had “good character” but said he appeared to become obsessed with the correctness of his own views. The sharing of military secrets constitutes “a flagrant abuse of trust” for which he has shown “no contrition”, he added.

McBride will be eligible for parole after 27 months.

After the sentence was read, some in the public gallery shouted “shame on you” at the judge as he left the bench.

His nearby support dog, McBride, hugged friends and family before being taken into custody.

He argued that his flight was justified because it ultimately exposed wrongdoing.

“I have not broken my oath to the Australian people and the soldiers who keep us safe,” he said on Tuesday before his sentencing, addressing a crowd of supporters who included relatives of the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, and fellow whistleblower Jeff Morris.

Even before he became one of Australia’s most high-profile whistleblowers, McBride led a colorful life.

After graduating from Oxford University with a law degree, he began his career with a stint in the British Army. Leaving after reaching the rank of captain, he then tried his hand at everything from private security to reality TV to politics, before coming full circle and joining the Australian Defense Force (ADF).

As a lawyer, he served two tours in Afghanistan in 2011 and 2013, the latter with special forces. It was then that he began to feel that “a line had been crossed” by the commanders.

Over the next few years, as he suffered from undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and abused drugs and alcohol, McBride said he became increasingly convinced that he had to speak out.

Working late nights at a military base near Canberra, he began clandestinely copying hundreds of sensitive documents, smuggling them home in a backpack for 18 months.

He first attempted an internal complaint. When that failed, he went to the police and the defense minister, before speaking to the press.

He believed the dossier he compiled would show that the ADF chain of command was so preoccupied with the perception of unlawful killings that it was scapegoating soldiers and undermining the confidence of special forces in carrying out their duties. work.

Instead, ABC journalist Dan Oakes discovered they contained evidence that Australian forces had committed war crimes and lied to cover them up.

“The more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t conceive that anyone would think that these guys were too closely monitored. It was exactly the opposite,” he recently told the Four Corners program.

“What happened on the field stayed on the field.”

The Afghan files contained revelations about military leaders themselves being concerned about a “warrior culture” within the force, and details of how soldiers allegedly covered up the unlawful killings of unarmed men and children – including a six-year-old boy who was reportedly shot dead. in his sleep in 2013.

Until then, very few allegations of war crimes had been reported.

McBride was quickly named as the man behind the leak and he fled to Spain shortly before the Australian Federal Police (AFP) descended on his apartment. There, officers found four plastic bins filled with classified documents hidden in a closet.

After a year in hiding, McBride returned to Australia and was charged with theft of Commonwealth property, breaching the Defense Act and disclosing confidential information.

This is an unprecedented moment in Australia that has made headlines around the world. Under public pressure, prosecutors ultimately decided not to charge the journalists, arguing that doing so would not be in the public interest.

The government also created the Office of the Special Investigator to open criminal investigations into these allegations. Only one person has been charged so far.

But despite mounting pressure, the government refused to order prosecutors to drop charges against McBride.

Australia has certain safeguards for whistleblowers enshrined in law. But advocates have long complained that they are weak and also require that whistleblowers meet a series of strict requirements before disclosing information — some of which, ironically, makes it easier for authorities to arrest them.

McBride initially planned to rely on these protections, but her legal team says she was forced to withdraw that defense after much of her evidence was expunged on national security grounds.

But that defense was also rejected by the judge, who ruled it had no legal basis and could not be put to a jury — a decision McBride’s attorney says he will appeal.

Advocates say McBride’s case shows that whistleblower protections don’t work and will deter others from reporting wrongdoing.

“It is a stain on Australia’s reputation that some of its soldiers have been accused of war crimes in Afghanistan, and yet the first person convicted of these crimes is a whistleblower and not the aggressors,” said Daniela Gavshon, Australian director of Human Rights. Watch.

Critics included many parliamentarians who called the result “perverse.”

“David McBride’s prison sentence sends a chilling message to whistleblowers across Australia… We urgently need better protection for whistleblowers,” said Independent MP Allegra Spender.