Seven years Chelsea Manning

Wikileaks informant served the most severe in the history of the US History for the drain of secret data

Three days before leaving the White House, US President Barack Obama did what he was asked for a very long time-he reduced the 35-year term by the Pentagon Chelsea Manning. She will be released on May 17, 2017, and not in 2045, as the court ruled. The White House explained that Chelsea admitted to violation of the law and went through the tribunal - unlike another informant Edward Snowuden, whose pardon is insisted by more than a million people (he is in Russia, and is accused of Stateismman). Medusa tells how Chelsea Manning was in prison, what she experienced there - and why he would finally be released.

Update. This text was written on January 18, 2017. On May 17, Chelsea Manning was released .

Chelsea Manning is only 29 years old, seven of which she spent in prison.

Bradley Manning, who later announced the change of sex, entered the service of the US Armed Forces in 2009. He worked as an analyst with intelligence in Iraq and had access to secret documents on Pentagon operations. Already during the service, Manning complained to the command of the gender identity: he hoped that the army might distract him from his thoughts about the floor change, but this did not happen.

Upon learning that the actions of the American military in Iraq are far from impeccable, Manning decided to tell someone about this, and first offered his services to newspapers, but he was not taken seriously. Then Bradley contacted the WikiLeaks team (at that moment - not a very well -known project publishing classified information) and began to transmit the most important documents. Manning downloaded about 500 thousand documents about wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early days of January 2010-and then, having arrived home to Maryland on vacation, sent them to WikiLeaks.

The first publications of documents transferred to manning began in February 2010, and in April WikiLeaks showed the famous recording of helicopter shelling in Baghdad in 2007-she was at the disposal of the Julian Assange project thanks to manning. The record shows that REUTERS journalists fell under the shelling, whose cameras took the military for their weapons; The publication again raised the question of the appropriateness of war in Iraq and the legitimacy of the actions of the American military. WikiLeaks later published a complete dossier about the war in Iraq (and then in Afghanistan), compiled from documents with the Secretary Grif, which Bradley Manning conveyed.

He was detained on May 27, 2010 and placed in custody. Manning was given by Hacker Edrian Lamo, with whom he became friends in May 2010-and which he admitted to the transfer of secret information WikiLeaks. Lamo, who has a criminal record for cybercrime, in his own words, perfectly understood that manning threatens if he tells the authorities about him - but he did it anyway. Bradley Manning at first was held in a small single chamber.

In 2013, he was sentenced to 35 years in prison; At some points of the prosecution, Manning could receive the highest measure of punishment and death, but the prosecutors did not insist on this. While in conclusion, Manning announced a change of name from Bradley to Chelsea - and began to call himself a woman, as well as demand the right to hormonal therapy and sex change operations. Until now, Chelsea Manning is in a male prison, although he does not consider himself a man.

Back in 2010, manning was placed under special observation in connection with possible suicide attempts. In 2016, Chelsea twice tried to commit suicide. In early January 2017, the New York Times entered a detailed article on how the house of Chelsea Manning works in prison. She is allowed to take hormonal drugs, as well as wear women's linen and use cosmetics. At the same time, she is forbidden to grow hair longer than the rules of a military prison in Kansas allow it.

Manning wrote an appeal to US President Barack Obama with a request to reduce the prison term - before he leaves the White House. In a statement, Chelsea wrote: “I do not ask to cancel my sentence. I understand that many consequences of my condemnation will remain with me forever. I just ask you to give me the first chance in my life to live outside the prison the life of the person that I was born to be. ”

The White House decided to radically reduce the term of Chelsea Manning on January 17, 2017, three days before the inauguration of Donald Trump. This decision cannot be canceled by the next US president. Manning will be released in May 2017, seven years after the arrest and 28 years before the expiration of the sentence.

The White House explained that Manning pleaded guilty and went through the trial, and did not receive asylum from the “enemy” - like Edward Snowden, who also asked for pardon (he is in Russia). The representative of Obama John Ernest emphasized that the documents that Manning abducted are not as dangerous for state security as the materials at the disposal of Snowuden.

On January 12, on the WikiLeaks Twitter, the promise of the project leader Julian Assange was published to come to the United States and appear before the trial - if Chelsea Manning will be released. On January 18, a statement appeared on the same Twitter that Assange was confident in the victory at a honest court in the United States. Personally, the head of WikiLeaks, who lives at Ecuador Embassy in London, has not yet commented on the promise to go to extradition, but called on the US government to stop the war with informants and projects such as Wikileaks.

Pavel Borisov