Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Bradley Manning's 35 Year Conviction Upheld

An Army general has upheld Private Chelsea Manning’s conviction and 35-year prison sentence for giving reams of classified US government information to the antisecrecy website WikiLeaks, the Army said Monday. 
The approval by Major General Jeffery S. Buchanan, commander of the Military District of Washington, clears the way for an automatic appeal to the Army Court of Criminal Appeals. Manning’s appellate lawyers, Nancy Hollander and Vincent Ward, told supporters Sunday in Washington that they expect to argue the sentence unreasonable. It is the longest prison term ever given by a US court for leaking government secrets to the media.
They said they also expect to argue that Manning’s speedy trial rights were violated, that the Espionage Act was misused, and that high-ranking commanders improperly influenced her case. 
The 26-year-old Crescent, Okla., native, is serving her sentence at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. She was sentenced in August for six Espionage Act violations and 14 other offenses for leaking more than 700,000 secret military and State Department documents, plus battlefield video, while working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2009 and 2010.
Buchanan, as commander of the jurisdiction in which the trial was held, could have thrown out or reduced the court-martial results. He approved the findings Friday, the Military District of Washington said in a written statement.
Read the rest of the story HERE.

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