Members of the Australian special forces murdered Afghan civilians, and the only person facing legal jeopardy as a result is a former military lawyer turned whistleblower, David McBride.
After the judge refused to provide the defense evidence of the war crimes, and explicitly ruled out any argument of interest in public McBride pled guilty to lesser charges.
With his options for a fair trial exhausted, Australian whistleblower David McBride on Friday asked for a new indictment to which he pled guilty on all counts.
McBride, a former military lawyer, was charged with stealing government documents and giving them to journalists to reveal covered-up murders of unarmed civilians by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan.
His defense had rested on the court accepting his argument that his oath to the British crown gave him a duty beyond obedience to military orders to instead inform the entire nation of these crimes.
But the trial judge, Justice David Mossop, said he would instruct the jury, which was to be selected starting Monday, to disregard any public interest in the defense. “There is no aspect of duty that allows the accused to act in the public interest contrary to a lawful order,” he told the court Wednesday.
McBride’s legal team tried to appeal that decision, but its application was denied by Supreme Court Chief Justice Lucy McCallum on Thursday. Later that day Mossop ordered that agents of the Attorney General’s office could remove classified documents from the defense’s possession, which McBride’s team had intended to present to the jury.
The appropriate term here is "Kangaroo Court."
Because of those regressive rulings, McBride accepted his attorneys’ advice that, left with no viable defense, he should plead guilty.
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