7/27/2019 Bradley Manning Guilty of Espionage in Wikileaks Case

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Bradley Manning guilty of espionage in Wikileakscase

30 July 2013

Bradley Manning, the US Army private who leaked thousands of classifieddocuments, has been convicted of espionage but not of aiding the enemy.

Pte Manning, 25, has been found guilty of 20 charges in total, including theft andcomputer fraud.

He had admitted leakingthe documents to anti-secrecy organisation Wikileaks but said he did so to spark adebate on US foreign policy.

The leak is considered the largest ever of secret US government files.

He faces a maximum sentence up to 136 years. His sentencing hearing is set to beginon Wednesday.

In addition to multiple espionage counts, he was also found guilty of five theft charges,

two computer fraud charges and multiple military infractions.

'Won the battle'

Pte Manning stood and faced Judge Colonel Denise Lind as she read the decision onTuesday. She said she would release detailed written findings at a later date.

He appeared to not react during the verdict, but his defence lawyer, David Coombs,smiled faintly as the not guilty charge on aiding the enemy was read.

7/27/2019 Bradley Manning Guilty of Espionage in Wikileaks Case

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"We won the battle, now we need to go win the war," his defence lawyer, DavidCoombs said of the sentencing phase. "Today is a good day, but Bradley is by nomeans out of the fire."

Being found guilty of aiding the enemy could have had serious implications for peopleleaking documents in the future, says the BBC's North America editor, Mark Mardell.

"The government's pursuit of the 'aiding the enemy' charge was a serious overreach of the law, not least because there was no credible evidence of Manning's intent to harmthe USA by releasing classified information to WikiLeaks," Amnesty International saidin a statement.

 Among the items sent to Wikileaks by Pte Manning was graphic footage of an Apachehelicopter attack in 2007 that killed a dozen people in the Iraqi capital Baghdad,including a Reuters photographer.

The documents also included 470,000 Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield reports and250,000 secure state department cables between Washington and embassies aroundthe world.

Pte Manning, an intelligence analyst, was arrested in Iraq in May 2010. He spentweeks in a cell at Camp Arifjan, a US Army installation in Kuwait, before beingtransferred to the US.

March to the White House

During the court martial, prosecutors said Pte Manning systematically harvested

hundreds of thousands of classified documents in order to gain notoriety.

With his training as an intelligence analyst, Pte Manning should have known theleaked documents would become available to al-Qaeda operatives, they argued.

The defence characterised him as a naive and young soldier who had becomedisillusioned during his time in Iraq.

His actions, Mr Coombs argued, were those of a whistle-blower.

In a lengthy statement during a pre-trial hearing in February, Pte Manning said he hadleaked the files in order to spark a public debate about US foreign policy and themilitary.

His supporters rallied outside the court in Fort Meade and said they are planning tomarch to the White House on Tuesday evening.

Posted by Thavam

7/27/2019 Bradley Manning Guilty of Espionage in Wikileaks Case

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