Bradley Manning charged
February 23, 2012
A US military court formally charged 24-year-old Army private Bradley Manning with nearly two dozen crimes on Thursday, related to his alleged leaking of hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks.
Manning faces a total of 22 counts, with the most severe - aiding the enemy - carrying a maximum sentence of life in prison. He also faces charges of causing intelligence to be published online, theft and computer fraud.
Manning deferred his plea at the arraignment on Thursday, as well as his decision to be tried by a military jury or a military judge alone. No date has been set for the start of the trial.
Prosecutors allege Manning downloaded more than 700,000 classified documents and video clips from military servers while he was serving in Iraq, subsequently passing them on to WikiLeaks. Investigators told a hearing last month that they had found contact information for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, military reports, cables and other classified material on Manning's computers and data storage devices.
Defense lawyers argue that Manning was a troubled young soldier who should never have been given access to the classified material.
The soldier was put in prison in May 2010. He has complained of being placed unnecessarily in solitary confinement and of being bullied by prison guards at the military prison where he is being held near Washington.
WikiLeaks's publication of classified documents relating to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and hundreds of thousands of secret diplomatic cables was a big embarrassment for the US government, which said the publication threatened national security and the lives of people collaborating with the military and American embassies.
Supporters of WikiLeaks say the site exposed US wrongdoing and see Manning as a political prisoner.
acb/msh (AP, AFP, dpa)