By Maya Palit
Chelsea Manning (previously known as Bradley Manning), the former US intelligence analyst and army private who became a whistleblower and leaked nearly 700,000 state documents and videos exposing strategies used in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, was handed a 35-year prison term in 2013. It was at the time, the longest sentence ordered for any government leaker, and she was charged under the Espionage Act along with seven other people, including Edward Snowden.
But in an unexpected turn of events, yesterday Obama — who, as The Guardian reports, had established a reputation for coming down hard on whistleblowers — reduced her sentence to 7 years, and she will be released in May this year. The media is speculating, though, that his decision could have had something (or a lot) to do with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s promise to accept extradition if Manning is freed, but the Obama administration said it was because of the disproportionately long sentence she received.
Manning was arrested in May 2010, and has spoken extensively about her harrowing experiences as a transgender woman in a male military prison, the prison’s refusal to treat her for gender reassignment, her time in solitary confinement in a prison in Quantico (during which a psychiatrist testified that she was subject to worse conditions than deathrow patients), as well as revealing her attempts to commit suicide. Does this decision herald better days for her, as civil rights groups suggest?