A former army lawyer who revealed Australia’s war crimes allegations in Afghanistan has been sentenced to prison, Australian media reported.
An Australian judge on Tuesday sentenced David McBride, 60, to nearly six years in prison for leaking classified information to the media that revealed allegations of Australian war crimes in Afghanistan.
McBride pleaded guilty to three charges, including stealing and passing classified documents to the press. He had previously faced life imprisonment. He must serve 27 months in prison before being eligible for parole.
Human rights advocates say convicting McBride and sentencing him earlier than the alleged war criminal he helped expose shows a lack of protection for whistleblowers in Australia.
McBride’s lawyer Mark Davis said he would appeal the severity of the sentence.
Tuesday’s sentencing ends a long legal battle between the former army lawyer and Commonwealth prosecutors who pursued charges against McBride over classified defence documents he admitted stealing between May 2014 and December 2015.
McBride’s documents formed the basis for a seven-part Australian Broadcasting Corp. storyline in 2017 that included allegations of war crimes, including the killing of unarmed Afghan men and children by soldiers from Australia’s Special Air Service regiment in 2013.
Rawan Arraf, the executive director of the Australian Centre for International Justice, said:
It is a travesty that the first person imprisoned in relation to Australia’s war crimes in Afghanistan is not a war criminal but a whistleblower.
In 2019, police raided the ABC’s Sydney headquarters in search of evidence of the leak. However, they decided not to charge the two reporters in charge of the investigation.
Passing sentence, the judge said he did not accept McBride’s explanation that he thought the court would acquit him of acting in the public interest.
Supporters of McBride have long expressed his concern that the Australian government was more interested in punishing him for revealing information about war crimes rather than the alleged perpetrators.
