The Australian government’s labyrinthine callousness and indifference to justice in its treatment of lawyer Bernard Collaery must be slotted in alongside that of another noted Australian being held in the maximum-security facility of Belmarsh, London, writes Binoy Kampmark.
Witness K
Actions were held around Australia to demand the immediate dropping of the prosecutions of East Timor oil espionage whistleblower Witness K and his lawyer, Bernard Collaery. Jim McIlroy and Alex Salmon report.
Scott Morrison’s melodramatic emergency media conference about an alleged, but unspecified, major cyber attack on Australia was calculated to instil fear. The context, as Peter Boyle writes, is the sustained and racist campaign by the Trump administration to scapegoat China for its own deadly failure to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic
The federal government is pursuing criminal prosecutions against a former secret agent and his lawyer for allegedly revealing Australia had bugged East Timor cabinet meetings during negotiations over the Timor Sea boundary. Paul Oboohov spoke to Timor Sea Justice Forum's Susan Connelly about the case.
#Folau was still trending on Twitter in Australia on August 7 as the endless whining — amplified by the corporate media — about sacked rugby player Israel Folau allegedly having his freedom to express his bigoted hate speech restricted persists.
The federal Attorney General’s case against a defendant dubbed “Witness K” began in the ACT Magistrates Court on September 12. Media reports say Witness K is a serving Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) officer.
Activists from the Movement Against the Occupation of the Timor Sea (MKOTT) delivered a 10-metre-long banner covered with the signatures of 1300 Timorese to the Australian embassy in Dili on September 16. The signatures were collected in protest at the Australian government's persecution of former spy Witness K and his lawyer Bernard Collaery, for allegedly blowing the whistle on the 2004 bugging of Timor-Leste Cabinet offices by the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS).
Protesters took to the streets of Sydney on September 12 against Australia’s prosecution of Witness K and his lawyer Bernard Collaery for allegedly whistleblowing on Australia’s bugging of Timor-Leste government offices.
More than 100 people attended a rally in solidarity with former spy Witness K and his lawyer Bernard Collaery outside the Treasury Buildings in Melbourne on July 25. The rally demanded that the current Attorney General, Christian Porter, cease the prosecution of the two.
Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions Sarah McNaughton SC recently filed criminal charges against Canberra lawyer Bernard Collaery and his client, a former officer of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS).