 Our next speaker, Dean Yates, was the Reuters Iraq bureau chief at the time of the collateral murder incident and will for the first time reveal details about what followed. This is a story that our prime minister needs to hear. Prime Minister Albanese, my name is Dean Yates. I was the Reuters bureau chief in Iraq when an Apache gunship with the call sign Crazy Horse 1-8 killed 12 men in Baghdad on July 12, 2007. Two of those men were Reuters photographer Namia Noor Eldin and Reuters driver Sayed Chum. My staff killed on my watch. The US military usually didn't investigate civilian casualties in Iraq. It did in this case because Namia and Sayed worked for a major international news organization. In an off the record briefing two weeks later, I was told by two American generals that the group of men that included Namia and Sayed were showing hostile intent and thus could be attacked. I was shown without warning less than three minutes of footage from the gun camera of Crazy Horse 1-8 up to where it opened fire for the first time. I was told the gunship then attacked a minivan because it was believed to be helping wounded insurgents and picking up weapons. US forces, I was told, had acted in accordance with the rules of engagement. For nearly three years, lawyers from Reuters tried to get a copy of this tape from the Pentagon through freedom of information requests so we could understand what had happened. Better protect our staff in Iraq. The Pentagon repeatedly refused. Then on April 5, 2010, Julian Assange published video of the entire attack. The classified footage had been sent to WikiLeaks by US military whistleblower Chelsea Manning. It was obvious why the US government didn't want to share the tape with Reuters. It showed grainy figures on a Baghdad street. The hellish clack of the Apache's chain gun, firing rounds the size of a small soft drink bottle, the length of a man's hand. Clouds of dust as those cannon shells crashed into men. A wounded man, Said Chum, father of four, trying to crawl for three minutes. Come on, buddy, says the Crazy Horse 1-8 pilot. All you've got to do is pick up a weapon. That's the gunner. When a good Samaritan taking his two children to school in his minivan stops to help Said, permission to attack is again granted. Crazy Horse 1-8 fires 120 rounds at the van. Oh, yeah, look at that. Right through the windshield. Ha-ha, says the gunner. Informed by soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, that a wounded child had been found in the van, the gunner says, well, it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle. Mr. Assange called the video Collateral Murder. It shocked millions of people around the world. International legal experts call the attack on the minivan a war crime. It is footage instantly recognisable by sight and sound. Crime Minister, the Collateral Murder video tape more than anything shows why Julian Assange must be set free. When I read the 18 count indictment against Mr. Assange for the first time, I skimmed through its 37 pages, searching for a reference to the tape. It wasn't there. I got a highlighter and read the documents more closely several times. The indictment against Mr. Assange is an attempt to criminalize what journalists do, getting information from sources, and then publishing the material. The footage was not among the charges, but the rules of engagement for Iraq from 2006 and 2007 that WikiLeaks released on the same day as the video were. How could that be, I thought? Why wasn't this tape, one of the greatest scoops in journalism of the past 20 years, which catapulted Mr. Assange into the international spotlight, made WikiLeaks a household name that sent a piece of the indictment. Remember Mr. Assange published Collateral Murder before any other material about the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan that Chelsea Manning had sent to WikiLeaks. After saving a copy of the tape, Ms. Manning told her court-martial hearing that she searched for and found the rules of engagement, a 2007 flowchart outlining the chain of command for the use of force in Iraq, and an ROE card given to soldiers that summarized those rules. Then I got it. The US government didn't want the video in a courtroom. Too embarrassing. Potential war crimes. Cruel pilot banter. That footage could do untold damage to its case. The US military repeatedly lied about the events of July 12, 2007, in which my Iraqi staff were killed. It was more than 12 hours before the military said anything publicly after the attack. When it did, a little after midnight, the military issued a statement saying US forces had returned fire and called in helicopter support after being attacked with small arms and RPGs. Quote, nine insurgents were killed in the ensuing firefight. One insurgent was wounded and two civilians were killed during the firefight. The two civilians were reported as employees for the Reuters news service. End quote, the statement said. Quote, there is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force. Said a spokesperson for US forces in Baghdad, a Lieutenant Colonel. Collateral murder showed that to be a lie. When Mr. Assange published collateral murder, the US military said all evidence available supported the conclusion that Crazy Horse 1-8 shot armed insurgents. Then US Defense Secretary Robert Gates called the investigation very thorough. He said soldiers were operating in split second situations and that these people, i.e. WikiLeaks, can put out anything they want and they're never held accountable for it. Mr. Gates claimed that watching the video was like looking at the wall through a soda straw. There was no context or perspective. I'm going to address these points one by one. Point one. The rules of engagement for US soldiers in Iraq said, quote, do not target or strike anyone who has surrendered or is out of combat due to sickness or wounds. It was written on the ROE card given to US soldiers. Similarly, the international law of armed conflict to which the US, the United States is a signatory, does not allow combatants to shoot people who are surrendering or no longer pose a threat. The Geneva Conventions prohibit attacks on the wounded. Collateral murder showed Crazy Horse 1-8 shooting a badly wounded man, Said, two unarmed bystanders who came to help him, and the unarmed Good Samaritan Van Dryer. Point two. Despite this obvious breach of the rules of engagement and international conventions, an AR-156 military investigation cleared the pilots among its findings. The AWT or Air Weapons Team accurately assessed that the criteria to find and terminate the threat to friendly forces were met in accordance with the law of armed conflict and rules of engagement, end quote. Point three. A day after Mr. Assange published collateral murder, a military spokesman for Central Command, which oversaw Middle East operations said, there was never any attempt to cover up any aspect of this engagement. The fact is, the military's lying began when the Lieutenant Colonel in Baghdad issued the statement that Said and Amir and Said were killed during a firefight. Officers from the 2nd Battalion 16th Infantry Regiment had reviewed the video and audio recordings from Crazy Horse 1-8 several times after the attack. The military had time to work out its response. The lying continued when the two American generals outlined to me the military's so-called investigation. When one of them told me, some of the men could clearly be seen carrying RPGs. The Crazy Horse 1-8 crew did not use the word RPG until Namir nor Eldin peered around a corner and took photos of Humvees in the distance. When this general briefly mentioned the attack on the minivan, but said the driver was believed to be aiding in surgeons, giving me a very limited account of the event. Point four. The Pentagon was deceitful in withholding the tape while I arranged for foreign media bureau chiefs in Baghdad to meet senior military officers to talk about journalist safety. It engaged in a cover-up by stonewalling Reuters efforts to get the video for nearly three years. Point five. When reporters in Washington asked a separate spokesman for Central Command where the tape was, he said the military couldn't find it. Another lie. Chelsea Manning found it easily enough. The first few minutes was even shown to a Reuters photographer embedded with the 216 in the months after Namir and Said were killed. All this explains why the US government didn't put the tape in Assange's indictment. That snapshot of the war would have exposed the hypocrisy of its case against him. The breach of the rules of engagement, the blatant way the military ignored the wrongdoing and the extent senior military and civilian officials lied about it. Imagine the damage this could have done in a courtroom. Collateral murder is so powerful because it is pure truth-telling. No military officials could deflect, sanitize, provide context. There is also no tape from any war like collateral murder in the public domain. The only comparable footage, the execution of a Viet Cong prisoner on the streets of Saigon by South Vietnamese National Police Chief on February 1, 1968, is held under license by NBC and could be obtained only with special permission. Everyone remembers the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo by Eddie Adams but not the footage because it's not a mouse click away. Adams' photo taken at the start of the Tet offensive changed how Americans saw the war in Vietnam. It's part of the historical record. I doubt few people would argue his photo should never have been published or that the Associated Press should have censored it or given the US military or its South Vietnamese allies a chance to provide context. A photo that shows Nguyen Van Lam's temple bulging as the bullet enters his head. The world needed to see the moment of Lam's death. The casual way he was executed. Can the same be said for collateral murder? Absolutely. Americans had the right to know how their government was conducting war in Iraq. How their taxpayer money was being spent. The cost being imposed on Iraqis. So did the people of Australia whose conservative government eagerly followed Bush into Iraq. It was also in the global public interest because up to that moment so much of the war was hidden from view. Collateral murder runs a mere 38 minutes but from the pilot chatter and the casual way permission was given to shoot we can assume it was the everyday in Iraq and Afghanistan. The attack on the van was not out of the ordinary. Collateral murder showed us that. If the United States so readily lied to Reuters, one of the world's biggest media organizations, imagine the falsehoods it fed to the families of ordinary Iraqis who perished in a hail of American bullets. Prime Minister Albanese, Mr. Assange faces 175 years in prison from the 18 count indictment against him. Five of those charges relate to publishing the rules of engagement 2006 and 2007 including the reference card that said do not target or strike anyone who has surrendered or is out of combat due to sickness or wounds. For those charges alone, Mr. Assange faces 50 years in jail. Think about that for a moment, Prime Minister. Mr. Assange could be imprisoned for half a century for publishing rules of engagement that showed the attack on Sayed and the minivan broke international law. Yet the United States didn't prosecute the men who pulled the trigger or anyone else in the chain of command. It didn't prosecute those who did the bogus investigation into the attack or engaged in the cover-up and lied about it. Prime Minister, watch collateral murder then bring Julian home. That said, I urge people in this room and beyond not to make this about the crew of Crazy Horse 1-8. The real criminals are the architects of the invasion George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Co. The men responsible for an illegal and reckless invasion based on the lies that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and are direct ties to Al Qaeda. The men who put the pilots of Crazy Horse 1-8 above the Alamin neighborhood and Eastern Baghdad in the first place. Thank you.