In war, the rule of law can be a ‘flexible’ concept – but one man stepped forward and blew the whistle on the secret cover-up of Australian war crimes.
David McBride
David McBride is a lawyer and writer, who was charged over leaking details of Australian war crimes to the media. As an Army lawyer, he served two tours in Afghanistan, where he worked in confirming or denying life-and-death decisions made by soldiers on the battlefield under international laws. He was medically discharged with PTSD in 2017. After making unsuccessful internal complaints about killings of non-combatants, he leaked details to the ABC in 2017, and the following year he was charged for the leaking of classified Defence documents. At his trial in November 2023 he plead guilty. His book, ‘The Nature of Honour’, was published the same month. He tweets from @MurdochCadell