Bradley Manning was sentenced by a military judge today to 35 years in prison for releasing classified information to Wikileaks, the largest leak in US history.
The army soldier apologized to the court last week, saying “I am sorry that my actions hurt people; I am sorry that they hurt the United States.”
Defense attorneys for Manning had tried to influence a lighter sentence for Manning, arguing that the Army was negligent in not recognizing the soldier’s growing instability. The defense maintained that the army should have in turn revoked Manning’s security clearance, transferred or discharged him. A psychiatrist had testified that Manning’s gender identity disorder and narcissistic personality traits contributed to his decision to leak classified materials.
On July 30th, Bradley Manning was found guilty of twenty offenses of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which included espionage, theft of government property and exceeding his authorized access. He was found not guilty of the most serious charge of ‘aiding the enemy.’
Manning leaked more than 450,000 war logs, several war related videos and 250,000 state department cables to Wikileaks.
He had faced a maximum of up to 90 years in prison, which had been reduced from 136 years when the judge ruled that some of the counts should be merged to avoid “an unreasonable multiplication of charges.”
Read here for prior Bradley Manning coverage.
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