BREAKING NEWS! Within the last hour, it has emerged that President Obama has quashed whistleblower Chelsea Manning’s 35-year prison sentence…
In 2010, ex-army intelligence analyst, Private Bradley Manning was convicted of copying hundreds of thousands of military incident logs from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which exposed abuses of detainees by Iraqi military officers working with American forces and showed that civilian deaths in the Iraq war were probably much higher than official estimates.
The files she copied also included about 250,000 diplomatic cables from American embassies showing sensitive deals and conversations, dossiers detailing intelligence assessments of Guantánamo detainees held without trial. Wikileaks published the documents.
Shortly after being sentenced, Bradley came out as transgender, preferring to be known as Chelsea Manning.
Chelsea Manning will now be released from the men’s military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas on May 17 of this year, rather than in the year 2045.
Protesters in San Francisco appeal for Ms Manning’s release
Perhaps due, in part to protests, the decision by Mr. Obama seems to have rescued Ms. Manning, who twice tried to kill herself last year, from an uncertain future as a transgender woman incarcerated at a men’s prison.
She has served almost seven years of her 35-year sentence, which was by far the longest punishment ever imposed in the United States for a leak conviction.
Only yesterday did Mr Robot Hacks poll whether President Obama should pardon whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Seems we got the right idea, but the wrong man!