U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning has been sentenced to 14 days in solitary confinement — punishment the U.N. recognizes as torture — for charges related to her suicide attempt in July, and for possession of an unmarked book in her cell.
Half of her 14-day punishment was “suspended,” meaning it can be reinstated later, so Manning now faces seven days in isolation. It is unclear when Manning’s sentence will begin.
According to a dictated statement from Manning, once she receives notification of her punishment in writing, she will have 15 days to appeal it.
At a four-hour disciplinary hearing Thursday, at which Manning was not allowed a lawyer, Manning was found guilty of “conduct that threatens,” broadly defined as “any conduct which interferes with the orderly running, safety, good order and discipline, or security of the facility.”
According to a column she wrote in The Guardian, Manning was not allowed to consult with a lawyer while reviewing nearly 100 pages of evidence against her, which she could only examine for an hour the week before.
She was also found guilty of possessing “prohibited property” in her cell — an unmarked copy of “Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy” — a book about the hacker group and activist movement Anonymous. Manning was acquitted of “resisting the force cell move team,” possibly because she was unconscious when the team arrived.
After being informed of the charges in July, Manning learned that she was facing possible indefinite solitary confinement.
Manning is a transgender woman, but the Army has repeatedly forced her to cut her hair and refused to allow her to receive gender-affirming surgery, despite her psychologist formally recommending it in April 2016.
Earlier this month, after Manning mounted a hunger strike to demand the surgery, the Army relented after five days. She will be allowed to consult with a surgeon, but will still be forced to cut her hair.
Since her arrival in prison, Manning has endured one form of mistreatment after another — including denial of recommended medical care, repeated threats of solitary confinement, and punishment for frivolous charges, like having an expired tube of toothpaste in her cell.
In 2013, Manning was sentenced to 35 years in military prison for sending hundreds of thousands of documents about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks. The documents revealed a far higher number of civilian casualties than the Department of Defense admitted, and included a video of Apache attack helicopters gunning down two journalists in Baghdad.
Chase Strangio, Manning’s lawyer with the ACLU, told The Intercept by email that he was afraid for his client’s well being.
“I am deeply concerned about Chelsea’s well-being after being sentenced to serve time in solitary confinement,” said Strangio. “In July she reached a breaking point and felt that the only agency she had left was to take her life. Thankfully she survived, but the message is clear with yesterday’s decision that the government is invested in punishing her for surviving.”
Strangio added: “I am also concerned about what it says about us as a society that we would tolerate our systems of incarceration punishing people with the cruelty of solitary confinement for attempting to end their life.”
[Disclosure: First Look Media Works, Inc., publisher of The Intercept, made a $50,000 matching-fund donation to Chelsea Manning’s legal defense fund through its Press Freedom Litigation Fund, and Glenn Greenwald, a founding editor of The Intercept, donated $10,000.]
Top photo: The main entrance to the U.S. Army’s Fort Leavenworth, where Chelsea Manning is held.
“Chelsea Manning has been sentenced to 14 days in solitary confinement,” writes Alex Emmons in his lead, “punishment the U.N. recognizes as torture.” Mr. Emmons links this misleading statement to an October 2011 post at the UN News Centre describing a committee report and news conference by UN Special Rapporteur on torture Juan E. Méndez.
By way of context, it’s important to understand that Méndez is one of 56 UN Special Rapporteurs, unpaid appointees with individual thematic or country mandates, who do not speak for the United Nations as a whole.
Mr. Méndez, a longtime penal reformer, was merely expressing his own view, which the UN did not endorse. Indeed, the UN as a body has never officially recognized solitary confinement as torture.
Thanks for the disclosure of donations to her legal fund at the bottom. I wish every journalism outlet would disclose their potential conflicts of interest.
Who’s acting like the faggot, here? Hint: it’s not Manning.
Oh, hell, I’m not going off the handle about 14 days in solitary, or half that, it’s ridiculous. There are civilians who have been sent to solitary for that many years based on bogus evidence or reasoning or some prison administrator who doesn’t like them. Between this relatively minor sentence and (more significantly) the offer of trans surgery, it sounds like some folks at the prison are trying hard not to be complete assholes, which is surely a risky career move at any military prison. I say let’s just say thanks for not doing worse, and let’s just keep our fingers crossed that they don’t get some butcher in there who fouls up the surgery.
Yep. She might want to hold off on that surgery.
Because nothing prevents suicidal thoughts better than an indefinite stay in solitary confinement! Go ‘Murika!!
I actually realize that the philosophy of military justice is less about guilt or innocence, and more about the maintenance of good order and discipline of the force – Pour l’encouragement des autres. That said, solitary confinement, indeed indefinite solitary confinement, is internationally considered to be a form of torture and is also unlikely to be an effective treatment to prevent someone with suicidal thoughts from making another attempt.
America, I hope that you realize that every one of your Presidents with an elegant memorial in Washington, and most 20th C Presidents as well, would consider, as I do, your treatment of Manning to be obscene.
Do you really think that they care?
“murder by bureaucracy”…it’d be interesting to see the research/data about people who switch gender identity after torture…typical of msm the focus is on Mannings gender dysphoria and away from her Whistleblower status. It’d be nice to see the ‘military’ quit dragging its heels so we can get through the appeal process. I think it’s a true fact that the umcj has NOT been reviewed and/or revised since the Civil War….
4 comments. Sad. To think a young woman Chelsea Manning is thrown into prison for alerting the American public to what their government/military was is doing in Iraq, Afghanistan. Those who have really died etc. We know the MSNBC Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Lawrence O’Donnell crew are not doing so…informing the public.
So she is suicidal and they want to throw her into solitary confinement….seems like they are trying to push her off the cliff.
Thank you Chelsea. One breath at a time
Traitor Manning
Hero Manning.
Nazi collaborator Traylor !
Super-powers don’t live forever! Sounds like the U.S. has seen it’s best days with this cruel and sadistic treatment.
// __ GENERAL YOUR TANK IS A POWERFUL VEHICLE
youtube.com/watch?v=cpBoq83WjPo
~
// __ The Letter Manning Sent To Obama Requesting A Pardon
youtube.com/watch?v=smIIOPt9iIQ
~
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/full-text-bradley-manning-s-letter-to-president-obama-requesting-pardon
https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/
~
RCL
// __ GENERAL YOUR TANK IS A POWERFUL VEHICLE
youtube.com/watch?v=cpBoq83WjPo
~
// __ The Letter Manning Sent To Obama Requesting A Pardon
youtube.com/watch?v=smIIOPt9iIQ
~
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/full-text-bradley-manning-s-letter-to-president-obama-requesting-pardon
https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/
RCL
There is not only lots of corruption being done at tax payers expense, but extensive murdering and destroying of people’s countries being done in the name of “freedom loving” and “democracy”.
It is very predictable that USG and Western MSM after demonizing him for exposing crimes against humanity would use him in order to give an example, set a precedent.
// __ Dear Mr. President: Free Bradley Manning!
youtube.com/watch?v=ViWtnjRw9bM
~
Even though it seems I tend to see reality biologically as you do (not because you “cosmetically”, outwardly change your sex, have same sex or change your name that will truly change your biology in any way, you will just be a man or a woman who changed her/his sex, has same sex or changed her/his name), but to me this is totally irrelevant and I couldn’t care less about it. In fact, if you are not some shill, I wonder how could anyone make such connections.
Einstein called the mother of his children “monkey face” and Roosevelt cheated on his wife, but those just were incidents, minor parts of their personalities no one talks about not their main achievements. So, why is Western MSM and US politicians/police state agents elaborating so much nonsense in the case of Manning? Could they possibly be drugging him to overreact his sexuality?, drive him towards committing suicide? while keeping “We the people” mesmerized talking about such b#llsh!tting nonsense instead of the stuff that matters?
I wish I be wrong, but as I have been protesting for a long time:
chelseamanning.org/news/manning-stripped-and-left-naked-ltc-coombs-report
They don’t even have to actually kill him outrightly. As USG learned from the stasi, you just put him under Zersetzung to make him commit suicide. That is their ultimate goal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung
https://www.ted.com/talks/hubertus_knabe_the_dark_secrets_of_a_surveillance_state
https://ipsoscustodes.wordpress.com/2015/05/27/zersetzung-made-in-u-s-a/
RCL
Wild West, colonist perversion. You can’t expect anything better from people working in the military prison. It would be nice to gather money and make media propaganda to rise awareness what they are doing with Manning. There should be no person in this world who doesn’t know what colonial perverts are doing.
Manning definitely had courage, but now he is wandering into freak territory and cant be taken seriously. Your rights aren’t being violated in any way if you cant have your penis cut off at tax payers expense.
What gives you the right to talk about Chelsea like that? Do you live in her body? Do a little bit of educating yourself before you start jumping on that train. I for one don’t want to hear it.
Chelsea is a hero, as is Snowden, and Assange.
Don’t you say a frigging word about TAXPAYER money when for over the last 15 years we have WASTED ENDLESS amounts of money on a CORRUPT WAR that our government is FORCING us to pay for while they get rich.
I would rather Chelsea get the operation than give BILLIONS to a TERRORIST country like we are selling Weapons to Saudi Arabia. Obama is a terrorist. Chelsea is NOT a FREAK! Just a WHISTLE BLOWER that had NO PROTECTION from the Terrorist USA!
Malinois has the right to say what he did as it counts as constitutionally protected free speech. Do I agree? No – I think he’s completely off the mark. But I defend his right to say it.
Your comment is irrelevant to the matter at hand, but needs to be addressed. As arguments go, yours is weak. Referring to Manning as a “freak” is insulting, incorrect, and betrays an intolerance of, and an ignorance of the very real problems confronting the transgendered. Would you call an African-American the N-word? Because that’s essentially what your doing here by referring to Manning as a “freak”.
I’m coming at this from the perspective of a teacher who’s taught over a dozen trans teens. Guess what: it could be your kid or mine. There’s really no way to explain how horribly difficult it is to be a transsexual teen, but the sickeningly high suicide rates are a good indication. A rate so high because of attitudes like yours.
Trans folk are not “freaks” (BTW -that’s a really nasty way to refer to anyone, especially someone you don’t know). They’re people just like you and I, trying to get through life the best they can. Their personal issues and psycho-medical needs are really none of our business, except that they are just as valid as ours.
WRT your lament of the cost to you of Manning;s gender reassignment surgery… really? You’re bitching about THAT? If you’re that worried about where your tax dollars are going, maybe you want to cost-out how much a Gerald Ford-class aircraft carrier is costing you. Or the F-35 boondoggle. Or the Wall Street bail-outs since 2008. Or the $110,000 per copy AG-114 Hellfire missles drones have been dropping all over central Asia and Africa for the last decade.
If you want to be a bigot, drop the bullshit and be a bigot. But don’t wrap it in “the taxpayer” Bullshit.
It should be pointed out that there is, in fact, a HIGHER rate of suicide amongst those who go through with gender reassignment surgery than those who do not.
Regardless of what one’s beliefs are in this situation, the POINT here should have absolutely NOTHING to do with Manning’s orientation, it should be on the fact that the US continues to punish the men and women that have the courage to stand up and show that there is corruption and lies happening where the US government swears black and blue there is not.
We should be defending men and women like Manning, like Snowden and the bloody US government should not be trying to turn these courageous people into criminals just because their lies and power tripping have been exposed.
The very idea that the likes of Hilary Clinton gets a pass on being so STUPID as to share classified information over insecure communication lines, but a man like Snowden who thoughtfully and carefully leaked enough information to INFORM the public of what was going on in their own county (nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism btw, or Afghanistan, or Iraq or any number of things the government tries to say this information “put in jeopardy”) is labeled a traitor and is offered a deal where he’s promised “he won’t be tortured”. GOOD GOD what a world we live in.