Chelsea Manning formerly known as Bradley Manning
A US District Judge ordered Chelsea (Bradley) Manning to be released from prison a day after he was hospitalized for attempting to commit suicide, Axios reported.
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Manning, a former US Army Intelligence analyst who gave classified information to WikiLeaks in 2010 was ordered back to jail last May for defying a grand jury subpoena.
Manning was jailed in early March of 2019 for refusing to testify to a secret grand jury about WikiLeaks and was released after spending 62 days behind bars.
A federal judge held Manning in contempt last May and US Marshals took him back into custody for the second time for refusing to testify before a secret grand jury.
Manning said he was prepared to return to jail “indefinitely” rather than testify during a presser last year before the trial.
“No matter what happens today, I’m not going to comply with this grand jury,” Manning said last year.
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Manning received a subpoena last January to testify before a federal grand jury in a case in the Eastern District of Virginia — this is the same district that the government accidentally revealed there was a sealed indictment against Julian Assange.
U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton, a Reagan appointee, ordered Manning to jail after he refused to testify.
In 2010, Private First Class Bradley Manning (who later transitioned to Chelsea) stole State Department documents, many of them secret international embassy reports. Manning smuggled the security documents out on a CD labeled “Lady Gaga,” and handed them to WikiLeaks – WikiLeaks subsequently took the sensitive cables and made them public.
In 2013, Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for giving classified materials to WikiLeaks.
In April 2014 a Kansas judge allowed Bradley Manning to change his name to “Chelsea.”
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In January of 2017, Obama commuted Manning’s sentence from 35 years to 7 years — Manning was released from prison in May of 2017.
According to reports, Manning tried to commit suicide this week by hanging himself with a bed sheet in his prison cell.
Axios reported that since Manning’s testimony is no longer needed the judge said he should be released from custody.
