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November 27, 2012

Bradley Manning Expected to Speak on Conditions at Quantico 
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Protests are expected in dozens of cities today as part of an effort to
call attention to the harsh conditions faced by accused U.S. Army
whistleblower Bradley Manning. Manning is expected to testify about
conditions during his imprisonment at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico,
Virginia, as part of a pre-trial hearing today at Fort Meade, Maryland.
The testimony will mark Manning's first public comments since his arrest
more than two year ago. Manning’s lawyers have argued all charges
against him should be dismissed because of his "unlawful pretrial
punishment," which included being held in a six-by-eight-foot cell for
at least 23 hours a day and being banned from lying down or even leaning
against the wall unless he was sleeping. Manning is accused of leaking
hundreds of thousands of documents to Wiki Leaks and has offered to
plead guilty to a subset of the government’s charges against him. In a
recent statement published by The Nation magazine, three Nobel Peace
Prize laureates condemned Manning’s treatment, which has been called
cruel, inhuman and degrading by a United Nations investigator.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mairead Maguire and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel
wrote: "If Bradley Manning released the documents, as the prosecution
contends, we should express to him our gratitude for his efforts toward
accountability in government, informed democracy and peace."

 

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