Bradley Manning Court-Martial Begins Monday - East Idaho News
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Bradley Manning Court-Martial Begins Monday

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139618654?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1370258844314Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images(FORT MEADE, Md.) — The court-martial for Army Pfc. Bradley Manning begins Monday in Fort Meade, Md. Manning is accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of military and State Department documents that ended up being published by online organization WikiLeaks, in what has been described as the most extensive leak of classified information in U.S. history.

Manning, 25, faces life in prison if convicted of the most serious charge of aiding the enemy. The trial is expected to last three months.

In the three years since first being detained during a combat deployment to Iraq, the former Army intelligence analyst has become a cause célèbre for civil liberties and anti-secrecy advocates who consider him a whistle-blower.

Army prosecutors consider him a traitor. The most serious of the 22 charges he faces is for aiding the enemy, which carries a potential life sentence. Prosecutors chose not to pursue the death penalty for the charge.

The additional charges include wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the Internet knowing that it is accessible to the enemy; theft of public property or records; transmitting defense information; fraud and related activity in connection with computers.

Manning pleaded guilty in February to 10 of the lesser charges that carried a 20-year prison sentence.   At a pre-trial hearing, Manning read for an hour from a 35-page statement in which he explained his motivations in providing 700,000 government documents to WikiLeaks.  

The documents included military reports from Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as hundreds of thousands of State Department cables.

Manning explained that he had leaked the documents to WikiLeaks in order “to spark a debate about foreign policy” and show “the true cost of war.”

Army prosecutors decided soon after that they would continue to pursue prosecution for the most serious charges against him.

Prosecutors will try to prove that Manning’s leaks aided the enemy by calling as a witness a Navy SEAL who participated in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. They say that copies of the documents Manning leaked to WikiLeaks were found on the computer hard-drives recovered by U.S. special operations forces during the raid.

That portion of the trial will likely be closed to the public and the media.

The circumstances surrounding Manning’s detention at the Marine brig at Quantico, Va., became a focal point of allegations that they amounted to cruel and unlawful punishment, which his attorneys said merited dismissing the case against him.

After a lengthy pre-trial hearing, the judge in the case found there was validity to some of the allegations and reduced his potential prison sentence by four months.

David Coombs, Manning’s attorney, posted a statement on his website Sunday night  thanking supporters for their financial support and for raising awareness of the case.

“On behalf of both myself and Pfc. Manning,” he said, “I would like to thank everyone for their continued support over the last three years.”  

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