Friends,
Let me know if you are interested in joining a vigil outside the
jail calling for Chelsea’s release. It could be a one-time event or we could
consider doing a monthly vigil.
Kagiso,
Max
Published on Portside (https://portside.org/)
Chelsea Manning Is
Jailed for Refusing to Testify in WikiLeaks Case
Charlie
Savage
March
8, 2019
NY
Times
WASHINGTON —
Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst who provided archives of
secret military documents to WikiLeaks in 2010, was taken into custody on
Friday after a federal judge found her in contempt for refusing to testify
before a grand jury that is investigating the anti-secrecy group.
Judge Claude H.
Hilton of Federal District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that
Ms. Manning must stay in civil detention until she testifies. Ms. Manning had vowed
not to cooperate in the investigation even though prosecutors in the
Eastern District of Virginia granted immunity for her testimony.
In a
statement posted on Twitter after she was arrested, Ms. Manning
said she had ethical objections to the secrecy of the grand-jury system and
“will not comply” with the subpoena.
The case is part
of a long-running criminal inquiry into WikiLeaks and its leader, Julian
Assange, that dates to the Obama administration and which the Trump
administration revived. Ms. Manning said on Thursday that prosecutors on
Wednesday had asked her a series of questions about WikiLeaks before the grand
jury, but she had responded to every question by saying it violated her
constitutional rights.
Mr.
Assange has been living for years in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London to avoid
arrest. Prosecutors charged him under seal last summer, a fact they
inadvertently revealed in a court filing in November.
The precise charge
against him remains murky, but trying to convict him of a crime for publishing
classified information he received from someone else would raise novel and
profound First Amendment issues. The Obama administration had decided against
trying to charge him because of fears that establishing a precedent that his
actions were a crime could chill investigative journalism.
“Chelsea is a
tremendously courageous person and this outcome was not unexpected but this an
appealable order,” said her lawyer, Moira Meltzer-Cohen, after the hearing.
Joshua Stueve, a
spokesman for the United States attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia,
said the government did not want to confine Ms. Manning, relaying a statement
that Tracy Doherty-McCormick, a federal prosecutor, had made after the judge
opened part of the contempt hearing on Friday.
“It has always
been our intent and hope for her to testify and comply with the valid court
order and valid grand jury investigation,” Ms. Doherty-McCormick said. “Ms.
Manning could change her mind right now and do so. It is her choice. This is a
rule of law issue, and Ms. Manning is not above the law
During
her court-martial in 2013, Ms. Manning had admitted sending WikiLeaks
large archives of secret documents. Her bulk disclosure vaulted the group and
Mr. Assange to global fame years before WikiLeaks gained a different type of
notoriety for publishing stolen Democratic emails that Russian hackers had
stolen during the 2016 presidential campaign.
In a lengthy
confession in 2013, Ms. Manning said she had interacted online with someone who
was likely Mr. Assange. But she said she acted of her own accord and was not
directed by anyone at WikiLeaks. Ms. Manning said prosecutors had wanted her to
go over those same events.
“The grand jury’s
questions pertained to disclosures from nine years ago, and took place six
years after an in-depth computer forensics case, in which I testified for
almost a full day about these events,” she said in the statement. “I stand by
my previous testimony. I will not participate in a secret process that I
morally object to, particularly one that has been historically used to entrap
and persecute activists for protected political speech.”
A military judge
in 2013 had sentenced Ms. Manning to 35 years in prison, and, and counting her
time in pretrial custody, she served about seven years — by far the longest
prison time any American has served for leaking government secrets to the
public — before President Barack Obama commuted the remainder of her
sentence in 2017. As a transgender person struggling to transition to life as a
woman, she had a difficult time in a male military
prison and twice tried to commit suicide in 2016.
The contempt
hearing on Friday was partly closed, but the judge had opened it for a portion
in which Ms. Meltzer-Cohen argued that Ms. Manning should be confined at home.
The judge rejected that request and Ms. Manning was taken to the women’s wing
of the federal detention center in Alexandria, Va., Ms. Meltzer-Cohen said.
Mr. Stueve said
federal officials had taken steps to ensure that Ms. Manning’s medical needs
would be met while she remained in custody.
Confinement for
defying a grand-jury subpoena can last until the term of the jury is over,
after which prosecutors would have to obtain a new subpoena and start the
process over if they wanted to continue to press the issue. Both Ms.
Meltzer-Cohen and Mr. Stueve declined to say when the current jury’s term is
set to end.
Follow Charlie
Savage on Twitter: @charlie_savage.
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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