Attorney General Mark Dreyfus ordered the Commonwealth to withdraw the prosecution of lawyer Bernard Collaery, four years after he was accused of leaking classified information about Australia’s alleged espionage operation in East Timor.
Collaery, a former ACT Attorney General, was facing the prospect of imprisonment and his follow-up date had finally been set for October 24 in the ACT Supreme Court after years of delays .
“Today, I have decided that this prosecution should end,” Dreyfus announced at a press conference in Sydney.
In 2018 he was charged under the National Security Information Act with five charges of leaking classified information for allegedly helping his client, an ex-spy known only as Witness K, to reveal during the 2004 trade negotiations for such as cutting off oil and gas resources in the Timor Sea.
Bernard Collaery chose to fight the charges after Witness K received a three-month suspended sentence. Alex Ellinghausen
In June 2020, Witness K received a suspended sentence three months later against him.
The charges against Collaery and Witness K were cleared in 2018 by then-Attorney General Christian Porter, whose consent was required before the Commonwealth Attorney General could initiate proceedings under the Services Act. 2001 intelligence.
Human rights defenders and whistleblowers have called on the Albanian government to withdraw consent for prosecution, as have several parliamentarians and senators, including Greens Senator Nick McKim, ACT Sen. David Pocock, MP of Kooyong Monique Ryan and Goldstein MP Zoe Daniel.
more to come