Chelsea
Manning's Lawyers Demand Her Release, Decry 'Punitive' Incarceration
commondreams.org/news/2020/02/19/chelsea-mannings-lawyers-demand-her-release-decry-punitive-incarceration"No matter how much you punish me, I will remain confident in my decision," said the whistleblower.
Lawyers
for Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning on Wednesday filed a motion for her
release, saying her continued incarceration for refusing to testify before a
federal grand jury is unlawful.
The motion,
filed in the Alexandria, Virginia-based federal district court for the eastern
district of Virginia, says that Manning's "incarceration is not serving
its only permissible purpose"—to coerce her testimony. Rather, the motion
argues, the detention is clearly punitive.
Manning
has been held in contempt of court and locked away at the Alexandria Detention
Center nearly continuously since March 2019. She may be held as long as 18
months unless she agrees to testify to a grand jury about WikiLeaks and its
founder, Julian Assange, who remains at a London prison as the U.S. government
seeks his extradition.
The
detention is also economically costly. Manning is being fined $1000 per day,
which her supporters have panned as
an "outrageous" escalation of the U.S. government's ongoing
harassment of her.
Manning's
attorney Moira Meltzer-Cohen explained how the continued detention is out of
legal bounds.
"A
witness who refuses to cooperate with a grand jury subpoena may be held in
contempt of court, and fined or incarcerated," she said in a statement.
"The only permissible purpose for sanctions under the civil contempt
statute is to coerce a witness to comply with the subpoena. If compliance is
impossible, either because the grand jury is no longer in existence, or because
the witness is incoercible, then confinement has been transformed from a
coercive into a punitive sanction, and thus is in violation of the law."
Manning has
been consistent in
her refusal to
testify.
"Over
the last decade Chelsea Manning has shown unwavering resolve in the face of
censure, punishment, and even threats of violence," says the new
motion. In "light of her history, it should surprise nobody to find
that she has the courage of her convictions."
"She
reiterated her refusal to cooperate with the grand jury process before this
court, and has now reiterated that refusal every day for more than 11
months," the motion adds. "There is no reason to believe she will at
this late date experience a change of heart; there is a profusion of evidence
that she will not."
The
attorneys included as evidence United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture
Nils Melzer's November 2019 letter to
the U.S. government expressing his concern about Manning's incarceration,
"particularly given the history of her previous conviction and
ill-treatment in detention."
Melzer
said that Manning's current detention may amount to "an open-ended,
progressively severe measure of coercion fulfilling all the constitutive
elements of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment."
Manning's
lawyers also included in their motion a report from a clinical expert on
Manning's personality that described her "willingness to endure social
disapproval as well as formal punishments" to pursue her values.
"No
realistic possibility remains that continued confinement or other sanctions
will bring about Ms. Manning's testimony," says the motion. "Further
confinement cannot attain its stated coercive purpose, and therefore will be
not simply futile, but impermissibly punitive.
Manning
confirmed her stance against her incarceration in a statement Wednesday.
"No
matter how much you punish me, I will remain confident in my decision,"
she said. "I have been separated from my loved ones, deprived of sunlight,
and could not even attend my mother's funeral. It is easier to endure these
hardships now than to cooperate to win back some comfort, and live the rest of
my life knowing that I acted out of self interest and not principle."
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"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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