Manning, a 25-year-old Army intelligence specialist, wasarrested in May 2010 and accused of passing hundreds of thousandsof sensitive military documents to the anti-secrecy whistleblowersite while working as an intelligence officer in Iraq. The soldieris scheduled to be formally court-martialed beginning this June andcould be sentenced to life in prison for his role in providingWikiLeaks with privileged material. Since details from thepre-trial motion hearings have been scarce, however, little hasbeen known publically about the government’s prosecution untilnow.
On Wednesday, the Military District of Washington informedmembers of the press that 84 judicial orders and rulings from thepre-trial hearings have been reviewed, redacted and uploaded to a military-run website where they can be viewed“In response to various Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)requests and inquiries from news agencies.” The trove so farincludes minor legal rulings regarding Pfc. Manning’s proposedplea, court orders sent to mental health professionals and otherrulings made by the judge.
The Army says that the seven-dozen documents published onWednesday make up just a small sampling of the more than 500 filesthat have already been either filed by attorneys for both sides inthe matter or the military judge presiding over the case, Col.Denise Lind. In all, those documents total more than 30,000 pages,and the Army says materials will be continuously published onlineas they are prepared for release. They warn the media, however,that “due to the voluminous nature of these documents,” itcould be a long time coming before the rest of the papers arevetted appropriately for publication.
The statement from the military comes just one day after Col.Lind ruled that although Pfc. Manning has been detained for over1,000days, the government did notviolate the speedy trial statute in the military’s Rules forCourts-Martial. Lind admitted to the court that delays in the casehave occurred in part due to the continuous efforts the governmenthas undertaken to audit the trove of documents relevant to thecase, but said the defense was not hindered by the slow-movingtrial. David Coombs, the civilian defense attorney for Pfc.Manning, had unsuccessfully asked the judge to dismiss all chargesagainst his client due to the lingering, nearly three-yearprocess.
Previously, Coombs imploredthe court to free Pfc. Manning by arguing that the treatment hisclient endured while detained in a military brig after beingcaptured was tantamount to torture. Lind agreed, in part, and said112days will be subtracted off of any sentence handed to theofficer. When Coomb’s latest request was declined, however,journalist Ed Pilkington wrote for The Guardian that the government’s absurd quest for totalsecrecy has left Manning to stand trial in an “Alice-in-Wonderlandworld.”
“Lind spent an hour and a half without pause reading out ajudgment that must have stretched to 50 pages, at a rate thatrendered accurate reporting of it diabolically difficult,” hesaid of Lind’s response to Coomb’s last unsuccessful appeal. “Nocopy of the ruling has – then or now – been made available to thepublic, presumably on grounds of national security, even thoughevery word of the document had been read out to the very publicthat was now being withheld its publication.”
“This prosecution, as it is currently conceived, could have achilling effect on public accountability that goes far beyond therelatively rarefied world of WikiLeaks,” Pilkington wrote. Onlyhours later, the Army said they would start releasing courtroomfilings.
Last May, the Center for Constitutional Rights sued the USgovernment over the lack of transparency in the Manning trial.“Public scrutiny plays a vital role in governmentaccountability. Media access to the Manning trial proceedings anddocuments is critical for the transparency on which democraticgovernment and faith in our justice system rests,” CCR LegalDirector Baher Azmy said in a statement when the petition against the Army Court of CriminalAppeals was filed. Additionally, a legal brief urging thegovernment to release documents was filed last September andendorsed by The Associated Press, Atlantic Media, Dow Jones,Gannett, Hearst, CNN, McClatchy, The New York Times, The New YorkDaily News, Reuters, the Washington Post and other mediaoutlets.
Pfc. Manning is expected to testify on Thursday this week whenhe is scheduled to formally offer a plea. He may avoid a lifesentencing by pleading guilty to lesser charges.
No comments:
Post a Comment