Manning to face court martial over WikiLeaks
A private charged in the biggest leak of classified information in US history will face a general court martial, the army has said.
Major General Michael Linnington, commander of the Washington military district overseeing the prosecution of Private First Class Bradley Manning, announced the decision on Friday.
Linnington’s statement follows a six-week-long Article 32 hearing, during which army lawyers argued that Manning should face the general court martial, the most serious form of military trial.
The decision means that Manning will stand trial for allegedly giving more than 700,000 secret US documents and classified combat video to WikiLeaks.
The whistleblowing website published them online and assisted numerous media organisations in disseminating and explaining the secret material.
Manning accessed the files while serving as an intelligence analyst at Forward Operating Base Hammer, near Baghdad, during a deployment that lasted from late 2009 to mid-2010.
The 24-year-old Oklahoma native faces 22 counts, including theft of public property, wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the internet, and aiding the enemy.
The latter charge carries the death penalty, but military prosecutors have said they will seek no more than life in prison.
(Source: aljazeera.com)
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