Ilhan Omar calls for pardon for drone whistleblower

US Representative Ilhan Omar has called on President Joe Biden to commute the sentence of Daniel Hale, a former intelligence analyst who leaked classified information about US drone warfare.

The Minnesota congresswoman has spoken out on the news and on social media in recent days about what she believes to be the unjust sentence given to a person who exposed US wrongdoing in its use of drones.

"Daniel’s case is exactly what the pardon power is for, where the letter of the law cannot capture the complex moral judgment that human beings make in extraordinary circumstances," Omar told Democracy Now in an interview last week.

"I take the prohibition on revealing classified information extremely seriously, but what Daniel did was courageous. What Daniel did was patriotic. What he did was public service," said Omar, who has long been an outspoken critic of US drone warfare.

In 2014, Hale leaked multiple classified documents. The following year, The Intercept ran a series of pieces called the Drone Papers, though they said they did not reveal their sources. The documents had information about US kill lists and civilian casualties.

Hale, who was sentenced in 2021, is serving 45 months in prison. He was arrested in 2019 on counts related to theft of government property and unauthorised disclosure of national defence and intelligence information.

"I am here because I stole something that was never mine to take — precious human life," Hale told the judge at his sentencing last year. "I couldn't keep living in a world in which people pretend that things weren't happening that were. Please, your honour, forgive me for taking papers instead of human lives."