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David McBride, the former military lawyer who exposed Australian war crimes in Afghanistan, will face trial next year after Commonwealth lawyers intervened to suppress the use of crucial evidence that reportedly would have granted him whistleblower protection.
McBride leaked documents to the ABC—known as the “Afghan Files”—detailing horrific acts carried out by Australian special forces (SAS) between 2009 and 2013, including several unlawful killings. One incident involved the shooting of an unarmed 14-year-old boy, Khan Mohammed, as he was collecting figs near his home in Kandahar province. Another was the shooting from a helicopter of three unarmed civilians in Jalbay after a suspected Taliban insurgent couldn’t be located. The documents also revealed evidence that Australian soldiers had been severing the hands of dead Afghans.
The leaks, which led to a police raid of the ABC headquarters, were central to the initiation of the Brereton Report—an investigation into the alleged war crimes. The report revealed a culture of brutality and cover-up among SAS soldiers in Afghanistan, including the unlawful killings of 39 Afghan civilians, the shooting of an unarmed intellectually disabled man in the back of the head, executions of unarmed or handcuffed detainees and the planting of AK-47s on dead bodies.
Whistleblowers such as McBride should be commended. Instead, the government is persecuting him. The Commonwealth argued for the suppression of McBride’s evidence on the...
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