Whistleblower David McBride was sentenced to prison for leaking Australian military secrets that contained allegations of war crimes. Image source: Bidgee, via Wikimedia Commons.
Former Australian army lawyer David McBride will serve five years and eight months in prison for releasing military secrets to journalists.
McBride pleaded guilty last November to one charge of theft and two charges of unlawfully sharing classified military documents.
ACT Supreme Court Justice David Mossop delivered the sentence on Tuesday 14 May.
Mossop found McBride’s high security rating gave him access to the material which aggravated the offences.
Prosecutors argued McBride endangered national security and foreign policy out of “personal vindication” by gathering, storing, and leaking the documents.
His defence told the court McBride acted with “honourable” intent and asked for leniency.
McBride admitted to leaking military secrets about Australian elite special forces’ operations in Afghanistan to the ABC.
ABC journalists used McBride’s leaks as the basis for the Afghan Files, a 2017 publication exposing war crimes allegedly committed by Australian military personnel.
The Afghan Files reported soldiers had allegedly concealed the unlawful killings of unarmed men and children.
Later, the Brereton Report found credible evidence to support the allegations of war crimes committed in Afghanistan between 2007 and 2013.
In 2019, the Australian Federal Police raided the ABC headquarters and seized the documents.
Afghan Files’ lead writer Dan Oakes was awarded an Order of Australia Medal “for service to journalism” in January, four months prior to McBride’s sentencing.
Australian Centre for International Justice executive director Rawan Arraf 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.”
Reports indicate observers in the public gallery shouted “shame on you” at Justice Mossop after he read the sentence.
McBride will serve two years and three months in prison before he is eligible for parole.
