Australian Defence Force whistleblower David McBride was released from prison on Thursday, 13 August 2026, after serving a 2 year and 3 month non-parole period in respect of criminal offences perpetrated when leaking classified documents to the ABC that revealed war crimes in Afghanistan and, as he claimed, a culture of coverup regarding senior management in a battlefield gone wrong.
McBride was sentenced to a jaw-dropping 5 year and 8 month head sentence by ACT Supreme Court Justice David Mossop in May 2024, and it was up to current federal attorney general Michelle Rowland to decide whether the former military lawyer should be allowed to walk, after he, as the whistleblower, has been the only person to have served time in respect of the war crimes scandal.
After serving tours of duty as an ADF legal officer in Afghanistan over 2012 and 2013, McBride became concerned over a decision by then chief of the ADF David Hurley to overhaul the rules of engagement, or the directives regarding soldier behaviour in battle, in late 2013, as he considered foot soldiers were to be blamed for the loose manner in which top brass had been running the war.
The ADF lawyer had been questioning the way in which the war in Afghanistan was playing at the same time as another researcher had been raising the alarm about an army culture that considered war crimes favourably, and he considered that a pile of briefings relating to incidents that were said to justify the reforms didn’t involve the...
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