14/07/22
For a decade, Bernard Collaery has been at the centre of an extraordinary legal saga in Australia.
It involves one of the country’s biggest diplomatic scandals – a tale of spies, oil and accusations of greed.
An esteemed lawyer, Mr Collaery had been staring down a possible jail sentence for helping to expose allegations of Australian wrongdoing in East Timor.
But last week, the case reached an unexpected conclusion.
“The whole things reads like some sort of bad novel,” says senior barrister Geoffrey Watson.
Bugging operation
It all began in 2004, when Australia allegedly bugged the government offices of East Timor, one of its most impoverished neighbours.
It did so to gain the upper hand in negotiations over lucrative oil and gas reserves – and it walked away with a sweet deal.
“This is the most appalling and terrible thing that Australia has ever done… to another nation,” said Mr Watson, a director of Australia’s Centre for Public Integrity.
“And it is the most venal of all sins because we did it for money,” he told the BBC.
When East Timor found out in 2012 what Australia had done, it was furious.
Mr Collaery and his client – an Australian spy known only as Witness K – were the ones who told East Timor, prosecutors later alleged.
The tiny country went to Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague in the Netherlands to pressure Australia into reopening negotiations.
But as The Hague court prepared to hear the case, Australian police controversially raided Mr Collaery’s home and legal practice in 2013.
A brief prepared by Mr Collaery – who was acting for East Timor in their case – was seized, despite it being subject to legal privilege.
“Seeing any investigation of a lawyer for pursuing a case is absolutely extraordinary,” says Australian constitutional law expert Rebecca Ananian-Welsh.
[…]
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-61836078
IAPL Monitoring Committee on Attacks on Lawyers 