You’ve commented the exact same thing in a previous post on this. Please actually engage with the counter-arguments and materials I responded with here .
That is some twisted narrative the abc has been spinning about their own source.
If David hadn’t wanted to expose the murders, he wouldn’t have leaked evidence of it. What’s more, he leaked evidence of their cover-up up to the highest ranks, which could be argued is he graver war-crime, since it fosters a culture of impunity.
It is true that David saw some soldiers, who served in Afghanistan the year after a lot of those murders took place, prosecuted unfairly, the way he saw it. He believes the Defence leadership were scape-goating these soldiers to be seen to be doing something about war crimes when in reality they continued the cover-up for the murderers. This flauting of command responsibility is the bigger story which the abc continues to ignore.
Edit: also, motive was never discussed during trial. Trial only ever got as far as pre-trial, where the justice ruled on the meaning of ‘duty’ (just follow your orders) and in a closed session allowed the govt to scoop away David’s evidence, leading him to plead guilty.
🚨 News hit today that David is in maximum security prison! He has no natural sunlight and restricted contact with his daughters.
I’ve posted about it here https://feddit.nl/post/18277656
That is some twisted narrative the abc has been spinning about their own source.
If David hadn’t wanted to expose the murders, he wouldn’t have leaked evidence of it. What’s more, he leaked evidence of their cover-up up to the highest ranks, which could be argued is he graver war-crime, since it fosters a culture of impunity.
It is true that David saw some soldiers, who served in Afghanistan the year after a lot of those murders took place, prosecuted unfairly, the way he saw it. He believes the Defence leadership were scape-goating these soldiers to be seen to be doing something about war crimes when in reality they continued the cover-up for the murderers. This flauting of command responsibility is the bigger story which the abc continues to ignore.
Edit: also, motive was never discussed during trial. Trial only ever got as far as pre-trial, where the justice ruled on the meaning of ‘duty’ (just follow your orders) and in a closed session allowed the govt to scoop away David’s evidence, leading him to plead guilty.
Antidote101, you sound like former CIA head and Trump’s state secretary Mike Pompeo, who in 2017 redefined WikiLeaks as a ‘non-state hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia’, before he got the CIA to draw up secret plans to have him kidnapped or killed.
The Biden administration is continuing Trump’s war on journalism with this persecution.
"Julian Assange can be freed with a phone call. The government can ring up their colleagues in the United Kingdom and say, you know:
‘send him home, his visa’s expired and serve the expiration date notice on him. Anything that the United States wants we can handle here’.
That is a clear possibility."
“The 13 years we witnessed acquiescence to whatever the United States and the United Kingdom wanted to do to Julian.”
“All of the people of Australia have bound together and brought into being a meme that spread into government, into parliament, into the congress, that Julian must be returned home. So it’s our congratulations that Anthony Albanese says in Parliament: ‘I see no benefit in this persecution continuing.’ Well he doesn’t say persecution. I’ll help him out there.”
I bet if the govt hadn’t pinched their evidence and it had actually gone to trial, that would have been one of McBride’s arguments; that it wasn’t a lawful order as evidence of murder can’t be classified. But that’s what Dreyfuss’s lackeys did with the approval of the judge.
How can you have a trial when the relevant evidence in defence is suppressed. You can’t.
To hell with the Nuremberg Principle. Just follow your orders!
McBride’s lawyer Davis said outside the court:
“It was the fatal blow made in conjunction with the decision made a few days ago that limits what we can say to the jury on David’s behalf in terms of what was his duty as an officer was on the oath he took to serve, as we say, the interests of the Australian people.
Well the ruling was, he doesn’t have a duty to serve the interests of the Australian people. He has a duty to follow orders. That is a very narrow understanding of the law in our view that takes us back really pre-World War II. We all know how military law has been judged since then in terms of compliance to follow orders.
So facing that reality, we’re limited in terms of what we could put to a jury in term’s of David’s duty … together with the removal of evidence makes it impossible, realistically, to go to trial. It is a sad day and a difficult day for us to advise David on his options this afternoon and he embraced them.”
McBride said: “I stand tall and I believe I did my duty and I don’t see it as a defeat, I see it as a beginning of a better Australia.”
UPDATE: David McBride has just plead guilty. https://twitter.com/CathyVoganSPK/status/1725373553011482853
Yes it is outrageous.
There a many in Australia who care about this a lot as is clear from the number of donors who raised funds for his legal defence. We need more people to talk about this. Buy his book The Nature of Honour, out this week and display it wherever you are. David will keep fighting from jail but we need to all fight for him. Talk to your MP. Demand the Attorney General intervene and drop this case.
This summary misses a key point:
McBride’s defence says he had a separate duty to act in the public interest
The solution is not to chide people. Their behaviour is not gonna change. The solution is to urban plan the need for car use away for most people. Less urban sprawl. More urban centers. More medium-density housing. Better public transport. You name it.
I think this reply says it all:
This is one of those tweets, that will come under the heading of “ratio’d”
#auspol
Section 71 of the Act says.
“When any person is under commitment upon a charge of an indictable offence against the laws of the Commonwealth, the Attorney-General or such other person as the Governor-General appoints in that behalf may decline to proceed further in the prosecution, and may, if the person is in custody, by warrant under his or her hand direct the discharge of the person from custody, and he or she shall be discharged accordingly.”
The power to drop the unjust prosecutions of David McBride and Richard Boyle lies with you, Mark.
I’d really like to know what else was in the bags of documents David McBride handed the AFP and what else was in the documents he gave to journalists including ABC’s Dan Oakes.