Whistle Blower Chelsea Manning Will Be Freed After 7 Yrs.Confinement
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| After 7 yrs Chelsea will be let set free as a whistle blower. Q. Will Putin’s mouth Piece, Julian Assange turn himself now and would admirer Pres. Trump also pardon him? |
President Obama has commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence officer, who is serving 35 years for giving classified information to Wikileaks, the White House announced Tuesday.
The decision, made in the last days of Obama's presidency, means that Manning can be freed May 17, seven years into her prison term. Obama granted 209 other commutations and 64 pardons.
The Manning commutation, which will undoubtedly be controversial, was not a complete surprise.
NBC News reported last week that she was on the president's short list. And at a briefing before the announcement, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that Manning's actions were not as "dangerous" as those of fugitive leaker Edward Snowden.
More than 117,000 people signed a petition asking the White House to consider the commutation, and Snowden had tweeted that if Obama could only free one person, it should be Manning.
Manning — then known as Bradley — was locked up in 2010 after swiping 700,000 military files and diplomatic cables and giving them to Wikileaks.
Three years ago, she applied for a presidential pardon and was rejected. In her petition this November to have her sentenced commuted, she said she understood her earlier request was "too soon" and "too much."
"I should have waited. I needed time to absorb the conviction, and to reflect on my actions. I also needed time to grow and mature as a person," she wrote.
"I take full and complete responsibility for my decision to disclose these materials to the public. I have never made any excuses for what I did. I pleaded guilty without the protection of a plea agreement because I believed the military justice system would understand my motivation for the disclosure and sentence me fairly. I was wrong."
Manning, who announced she was a transgender woman the day after her sentencing, said she has not been able to get proper treatment for an anxiety-producing condition called gender dysphoria while incarcerated at the military prison in Leavenworth, Kansas.
"The bottom-line is this: I need help and I am still not getting it. I am living through a cycle of anxiety, anger, hopelessness, loss, and depression. I cannot focus. I cannot sleep. I attempted to take my own life,” she wrote.
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