Prosecution of Blueprint Prize-winner Bernard Collaery Ended
The Australian Attorney General Mark Dreyfus today announced that all charges would be dropped against lawyer Bernard Collaery, in an enormous win for national security whistleblowing, both within Australia and globally.
Collaery is the 2020 winner of the Blueprint For Free Speech International Whistleblower Prize and legal representative of Witness K, a former employee of Australia’s intelligence services (ASIS) and himself the winner of a Blueprint Special Recognition Award for his disclosures about an Australian intelligence operation against East Timor, one of the poorest countries on earth. Blueprint has actively campaigned to end prosecutions of both Witness K and Bernard Collaery.
In a development that shocked Australia’s legal community, in 2018 it was announced that Collaery was facing criminal charges for conspiring to share information protected by Section 39 of Australia’s Intelligence Services Act - exactly the same charge as his client. Collaery and Witness K had been the subject of a protracted investigation that had begun in 2013.
In response to the announcement, Collaery recognised the depth of the support he had received throughout his ordeal and the friends “who gave me inner strength.”
Attorney General Dreyfus took office at the end of May, when Labor swept aside a decade of rule by the conservative Morrison Coalition Government. The change in decision-making personnel had given hope to the grassroots civil society community advocating for Collaery.
Dreyfus’ decision overturned the 2018 authorisation under section 71 of the Judiciary Act signed by then Attorney General Christian Porter which allowed the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions to pursue charges against Collaery and his client, Witness K.
Several other high-profile Australians, who are either whistleblowers or have worked with them to publish their public interest disclosures, are also looking to the new Albanese Government to see if it will right wrongs done over the past decade. These include:
Julian Assange, the journalist and publisher of WikiLeaks, who faces 18 charges in the US primarily for publishing primary data and news stories about the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Despite not facing any criminal charges in the UK, Assange is being held in custody in London’s Belmarsh Prison pending appeals against extradition.
Richard Boyle, a former tax office employee who revealed that funds were being garnished out of individuals’ bank accounts by tax officials without going through the proper process.
David McBride, a former British Army Major, Australian Army lawyer and the son of the doctor who originally blew the whistle on Thalidomide causing birth defects in unborn babies. McBride revealed information about alleged war crimes committed by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan. The Brereton Report, by Major Gen Justice Paul Brereton determined there was credible evidence of Australian soldiers committing war crimes. McBride is currently awaiting trial on five separate charges including Theft of Government Properly, Breach of the Defence Act and unlawfully disclosing a Commonwealth document.
Blueprint for Free Speech calls for the incoming Australian Government to drop all charges and investigations against each of these Australians, and, in the case of Assange, for the Australian Government to make a formal request of the US to drop the charges.