The United States Army private responsible for the biggest intelligence leak in US history will finally be tried in a military court starting Monday after more than three years of pretrial detainment.
The court-martial of Private first class Bradley Manning will
begin in Ft. Meade, Maryland this week and is slated to run
through the summer. Manning, 25, could be sentenced to spend the
rest of his life behind bars if convicted of aiding the enemy,
the most serious of the more than 20 counts he’s been charged
with by Army prosecutors.
US authorities arrested Manning in May 2010 and accused him of
sending hundreds of thousands of sensitive government files to
the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. Earlier this year Manning
admitted to sharing the documents, including State Department
diplomatic cables and military war logs, and pleaded guilty to a
number of lesser counts carrying a maximum sentence of only 20
years. Prosecutors say those files benefited the operations of Al
Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, however, and are asking for life
in prison.
Dozens of witnesses are expected to be called during the trial,
including a handful of military personnel whose testimonies will
be conducted behind closed doors to protect the sensitive nature
pertaining to Manning’s alleged crimes. Pretrial hearings in the
case have been conducted off and on at Ft. Meade since late 2011,
but Manning himself has only had the opportunity to address the
court at length on a few occasions, including in February when he
testified to leaking the documents.
Speaking of the Iraq and Afghan war logs that were leaked by
Manning, he said at that hearing, “I believe and still believe
that these tables are two of the most significant documents of
our time.”
During Saturday’s rally in Maryland, former Defense Department
staffer Daniel Ellsberg said, “There would be tens of
thousands of American troops in Iraq right now and many others
would have died if Bradley Manning had not revealed
atrocities.”
Ellsberg, like Manning, was charged with violating the Espionage
Act after he gave military documents to the New York Times in
1971 that became known as the Pentagon Papers and has been
credited with many for helping end the Vietnam War. Manning
“saved American lives” by going to WikiLeaks, Ellsberg
said.
Ellsberg defined what is happening to individuals like Manning as
a “war on truth telling, truth telling specifically about
truth that the government doesn’t want out, truth about
government crimes or lies that the public needs to know to act as
a democracy”.
Experts describe Manning as a patriot with no anti-American
sentiments.
“What [Manning] did came from a place of patriotism. He’s in
no way anti-American and never expressed anti-American sentiments
in any way,” argues the author of ‘Private: Bradley Manning,
WikiLeaks, and the Biggest Exposure of Official Secrets in
American History’ Denver Nicks.
Former MI-5 whistleblower Annie Machon told RT that President
Obama has an appalling track record when it comes to cracking
down on people seeking to enlighten the public.
“[Obama] has re-animated an old law, which is the 1917
Espionage Act in America, and he has used it I think six or seven
times during his presidency to persecute and prosecute and
threaten whistleblowers. He is using an antiquated piece of
legislation that is supposed to protect Americans from espionage
against journalists and whistleblowers who act in the public
good. I think it is just disgusting.”
Critics are saying there is a general problem with transparency
in the US.
“[The US’s] problem is a cult of secrecy, extreme levels of
dystopian secrecy. Washington classified 92 million documents in
2011. To put things in perspective, what Bradley Manning leaked
is less than 1 per cent of that,” civil rights attorney and
author of ‘The Passion of Bradley Manning’ Chase Madar told RT.
A vigil for Manning is planned for early Monday outside the gates
of Ft. Meade, and supporters that have traveled from around the
world to attend the proceedings hope to secure a seat in the
courtroom during the first day of hearings. The Army has already
set aside 12 weeks for the hearing and acknowledged last week
that hundreds of media organizations requested credentials to
cover the trial.
RT plans to provide updates on the case Monday and throughout the
trial.
This article originally appeared on: RT