It's impossible to find anywhere more removed from Baghdad at the height of the Iraq War than hiking in the Cradle Mountain National Park in Tasmania.
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But that is where former Reuters news agency Baghdad bureau chief Dean Yates found himself on April 5, 2010, when Wikileaks released the Collateral Murder video.
When Mr Yates emerged from the hike with his wife and two children, he noticed it mentioned in a local newspaper. The video showed the full vision from a US Apache helicopter as it opened fire on a group of people, including Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and driver Saeed Chmagh - his colleagues.
It devastatingly filled in the gaps for Mr Yates, and the enormity hit home.
"I immediately realised that the US military had lied to us," he wrote in his witness statement, tendered as part of the defence case against the extradition of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
The grief of loss
On July 12, 2007, Mr Yates was at his desk in Baghdad's red zone when he was told of the deaths. Not only did he have to process his grief, he also had to file a news story.
Then came the search for answers.
That evening, the US military released a statement which included this line: "There is no question that Coalition Forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force."
Three days later, Namir's cameras were returned to Reuters. He had photographed nearby US Humvees and the aftermath of an earlier shooting, with no frames of insurgent gunmen or clashes. A van at the scene had sustained heavy fire.
Military officials told Mr Yates that the Apache, "Crazy Horse 1-8", had requested permission to fire after seeing a group of "military-aged males" with weapons acting suspiciously. He was shown photographs of an assault rifle and two RPGs from the scene.
Mr Yates was then shown footage in which the pilot sought permission to fire because, due to the men being armed, they were "expressing hostile intent". Namir can be seen crouching and holding his long-lens camera, which the pilot thinks is an RPG. The firing starts, and the video ends.
They were not allowed to see what happened when the van arrived, despite Freedom of Information requests.
"I stayed in Baghdad until October 2008; we did not get the full video," Mr Yates wrote.
The trauma of a cover-up
The release of Collateral Murder shocked the world.
At first, and before viewing the video, Mr Yates doubted it was the same incident given the amount of new footage it showed from the July 12 attack - including audio of the pilot.
Namir is tracked as he stumbles before being hit by fire. "Oh, yeah, look at those dead bastards," a pilot says. Saeed survives, "all you gotta do is pick up a weapon," another pilot says.
A minivan arrives. The US members guess that it's picking up bodies and weapons, and they request permission to attack again. More apparently unarmed men arrive and put the injured Saeed in the van.
Watch: the Collateral Murder video (warning: distressing content):
The Apache fires again, killing Saeed, the van's driver and his two children aged 10 and five who were in the van. Ground troops relay that a child is badly wounded, to which an Apache member replies, "it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle".
The US denied they had engaged in a cover-up, but Mr Yates - who had acted in good faith with US forces during his time in Baghdad - is adamant.
"I came to blame Namir, thinking that the helicopter fired because he had made himself look suspicious and it just erased from my memory the fact that the order to open fire had already been given," he wrote.
"The one person who picked this up was Assange. On the day he released the tape he said the helicopter opened fire because it sought permission and was given permission."
Honouring memories of colleagues
Without the release of the video, Mr Yates believes Namir and Saeed would have remained "forgotten statistics".
It resulted in him actively participating in the defence of Assange as he fights extradition from the UK to the US to face espionage charges.
"What Assange did was 100 per cent an act of truth-telling, exposing to the world what the war in Iraq in fact was and how the US military behaved and lied," Mr Yates wrote in his witness statement.
Now living in Evandale, Mr Yates had become a trauma counsellor and advocate for those suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, including winning PTSD presumptive rights for public sector workers in Tasmania.
Importance of transparency
The Julian Assange case was discussed in detail in Launceston last week during an event involving former SBS journalist Mary Kostakidis and former Wikileaks Party campaign director Greg Barns SC.
It was held on the same day that the Brereton Report was released, detailing allegations of the murder of 39 Afghan civilians and SAS soldiers made to shoot prisoners as their first kill.
Ms Kostakidis said there were clear parallels between the whistleblowers who helped to expose the alleged Australian war crimes committed in Afghanistan, and the work of Assange.
IN OTHER NEWS:
"Wikileaks revealed that many thousands of civilians died in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that's a statistic to us. Today, if we can be shaken out of our indifference, just the general public, this will be a very very good thing which will hopefully then make us look at Julian and what he's revealed in a different way as well," she said.
Mr Barns said the Assange case was "designed to send a message" that the US could exercise power to extradite any Australian journalist who published material about American war crimes.
He urged attendees to lobby MPs in marginal electorates for the government to help bring Assange back to Australia.
The judge presiding in Assange's extradition trial will deliver her verdict on January 4, but given the likelihood of appeal through a further two courts, the matter is unlikely to be resolved for 18 months.