Chelsea Manning Will Be Free In May As Obama Commutes Much Of Her 35 Year Sentence

She will now be released 28 years early on May 17 instead of remaining in military custody until 2045 as per her original sentence. Manning was sentenced under US Army Court Martial to 35 years’ imprisonment back in August of 2013 after releasing thousands of documents to WikiLeaks –these documents came to be known as the Iraq War Logs and the Afghan War Diary.

The White House announced Tuesday that Manning was just one of 273 other people who were given a second chance after tallying up Obama’s commutation grants and pardons. Obama has pardoned 212 individuals so far and issued 1385 grants of communication. Manning was revealed as the leaker of tens of thousands of these classified documents thanks to a chat she had online in 2010 with ex-hacker, Adrian Lamo. He turned her into the authorities after she had divulged this information to him. “[I] wouldn’t mind going to prison for the rest of my life, or being executed so much, if it wasn’t for the possibility of having pictures of me... plastered all over the world press... as boy...[sic],” Manning wrote to Lamo. Manning hoped that the information leaked “might change something,” “I want people to see the truth... regardless of who they are... because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.” she told Lamo. Below is a list of some of the important documents that were leaked by Manning via Wikileaks before she was turned into authorities. This list was put together by thenation.com: * Oil giant Shell claims to have “inserted staff” and fully infiltrated Nigeria’s government. * American and British diplomats fear Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program — with poor security — could lead to fissile material falling into the hands of terrorists or a devastating nuclear exchange with India. Keep in mind that these are just some of the thousands of documents leaked by Manning. One of the most shocking pieces revealed by manning became known as the Collateral Murder video. According to WikiLeaks: “5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad — including two Reuters news staff. Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack.

The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-sight, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.” Prior to Obama announcing Manning’s commute, WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange offered to surrender himself to authorities should the president follow through on his report to free Manning. WikiLeaks confirmed: “If Obama grants Manning clemency Assange will agree to US extradition despite clear unconstitutionality of DOJ [Department of Justice] case”. Despite this suggestion to essentially take Manning’s place in prison and agreeing to “US extradition” the only outstanding warrant for Assange’s arrest is from Sweden, where he is wanted for an alleged rape case. President-elect Donald Trump has praised Assange in the past for publishing illegally hacked documents from the Democratic National Convention, which makes it seem doubtful of any future case against WikiLeaks founder. Do you think this is why Obama is letting Manning off the hook? Share your thoughts with us! Much Love .

Read the full article at the original website

References:

• https://www.thenation.com/article/long-list-what-we-know-thanks-private-manning/
• https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/
• http://<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">If Obama grants Manning clemency Assange will agree to US extradition despite clear unconstitutionality of DoJ case <a href="https://t.co/MZU30SlfGK">https://t.co/MZU30SlfGK</a></p>&mdash; WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) <a href="https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/819630102787059713">January 12, 2017</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>