Apparently anonymous Pentagon sources have told NBC news that they are failing to find any evidence of direct contact between Pvt. Bradley Manning and Julian Assange in its attempts to indict Assange for prosecution.
Manning is still in solitary confinement at the Marine base in Quantico, VA. According to Democracy Now!, “On Monday, the human rights group Amnesty International wrote the Pentagon to protest what it called Manning’s ‘inhumane’ treatment.” Manning was arrested last spring in connection to the “Collateral Murder” video released by WikiLeaks, which shows a US Army helicopter opening fire on civilians; those killed included two Reuters employees. Manning allegedly confessed to former hacker Adrian Lamo that he was responsible for leaking the video, who turned him in.
The treatment 23-year-old Manning is being subjected to includes being “held for 23 hours a day in a sparsely furnished solitary cell and deprived of a pillow, sheets, and personal possessions since July 2010,” according to the Amnesty International website. It continues,
Last Tuesday, Manning was placed on ‘suicide risk’, which resulted in him being stripped of his clothes apart from underwear, and the confiscation of his prescription glasses for most of the day, which Manning says left him in “essential blindness”.
Following protests from Manning and his lawyers, the ‘suicide risk’ restrictions were lifted on Thursday.
Manning is classed as a “maximum custody” detainee, despite having no history of violence or disciplinary offences in custody. This means he is shackled at the hands and legs during all visits and denied opportunities to work, which would allow him to leave his cell.
Manning is also detained under a Prevention of Injury (POI) assignment, despite a recommendation from his official military psychiatrist that this is not necessary. Detainees with POI status are subjected to extra restrictions such as checks by guards every five minutes and bars on sleeping.
There have been no formal reasons given for Manning’s maximum custody and POI status, yet his lawyers’ attempts to challenge the restrictions have been ignored by the authorities.
“The repressive conditions imposed on Manning breach the US’s obligations to treat detainees with humanity and dignity,” said Susan Lee.
While Manning is subjected to inhumane treatment and Assange is ‘free’ on bail in London, Wired.com reports that “WikiLeaks has acknowledged possessing a second video Manning mentioned in his chat, but has not published it to date. This one involves a May 2009 airstrike near Garani village in Afghanistan that the local government says killed nearly 100 civilians, most of them children.”
Wired.com suggests, “If it’s true that investigators have found no evidence linking Manning and Assange, it may be because Manning allegedly erased it from his system. He discussed doing so in his chats with Lamo. Manning noted in the chats that any incriminating evidence of his activities had been ‘zerofilled’, or erased, from his computers.”
Lamo provided the state department with the chat logs of his conversations with Manning, a segment of which follows:
(02:09:24 AM) Lamo: *random* are you concerned aboutCI/CID looking into your Wiki stuff? I was always paranoid.
(02:09:40 AM) Manning: CID has no open investigation
(02:10:28 AM) Manning: State Department will be uber-pissed… but I dont think they’re capable of tracing everything…————
(02:14:36 AM) Lamo: So you have these stored now?
(02:14:54 AM) Manning: i had two computers… one connected to SIPRNET the other to JWICS…
(02:15:07 AM) Manning: no, they’re government laptops
(02:15:18 AM) Manning: they’ve been zerofilled
(02:15:22 AM) Manning: because of the pullout
(02:15:57 AM) Manning: evidence was destroyed… by the system itself
(02:16:10 AM) Lamo: So how would you deploy the cables? If at all.
(02:16:26 AM) Manning: oh no… cables are reports
(02:16:34 AM) Lamo: ah
(02:16:38 AM) Manning: State Department Cable = a Memorandum
(02:16:48 AM) Lamo: embassy cables?
(02:16:54 AM) Manning: yes
(02:17:00 AM) Manning: 260,000 in all
(02:17:10 AM) Manning: i mentioned this previously
(02:17:14 AM) Lamo: yes
(02:17:31 AM) Lamo: stored locally, or retreiveable?
(02:17:35 AM) Manning: brb latrine =P
(02:17:43 AM) Manning: i dont have a copy anymore
(02:17:59 AM) Lamo: *nod*
Manning has not been formally charged, yet the military seems to be taking every opportunity to punish him. Assange is still restricted to London, waiting for his Feb. 7 hearing for possible extradition for questioning in Sweden — not even for prosecution (an “improper” reason for extradition, according to Assange’s legal defense team, as quoted by the Guardian, UK). All while the whole world is watching, waiting and tweeting; but there is still much we do not see, and many wonder what we can actually do. At the very least, we can keep reminding the powers that be that we are in fact watching.
What is happening to Bradley Manning is heinous. My heart goes out to him. Where does it end, man’s deplorable inhumanity to fellow man — a fellow countryman at that — and where does it start, for crying out loud, for us to raise righteous ire our governments that get off on employing bullying, abusive tactics for some so called notion of *&%$ “freedom?” They can take that perverted notion of freedom and shove it.
Bradley Manning should be released immediately and that “shower” (irish term, but you can probably catch my drift) from your previous administration should be marched to the Hague.
Ah, here’s our Assange in the news again, sort of:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thecutline/20110126/ts_yblog_thecutline/ny-times-editor-reveals-difficult-dealings-with-assange
“NY Times editor reveals difficult dealings with Assange”
re: NYTMmag: “The Boy Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest” article on dealing with Assange
Kayla – agreed; the military recruiters and ROTC bit was like a huge poster of ‘Uncle Sam’ rising up saying “I want YOU to kill for America”. That bit combined with the bit about pulling “out” of Iraq and Afghanistan and the “we need to education our population” sent me reeling from the disconnect between those concepts.
If we’re going to educate – then keep ROTC and “recruiters” OFF campus. That means K-12 and college. And get em out of the frickin’ shopping malls. Signing up for the military is NOT the same as a box of See’s Chocolates or a AEO tee-shirt.
#%&*@!!!!!!
I just watched Obama speak. I confess I have extremely limited tolerance for such events but for some reason felt to watch this tonight. Maybe because the two parties were intermingled and that would maybe feel different. Maybe it did, a little bit.
But I was sickened by the remarks about Iraq and Afghanistan. I contrast the treatment of Manning with the statements about supporting the military made by the President. I know Obama is not in a position where it is at all likely he would speak otherwise. Nevertheless, it is a most painful juxtaposition for me.
I wish I could hope that this development, of the failure to find connections between Manning and Assange, would result in more generous treatment of Manning by his captors, but I do not have that hope.
Though there is a little bit of good news here and there, though I can applaud it when I see it, this situation with Manning really makes me sad.
And I was truly disgusted to hear Obama call for schools and universities to open their doors and campuses to military recruiters and ROTC classes — this was presented almost as some kind of tit-for-tat exchange, being demanded as due, now that gays can openly fight and die for their country. I guess he was trying to make the generals happy, and it did not look as though it was working, much.
Not to mention the brag about how America’s food is safe to eat, our water is safe to drink our air is safe to breathe.
Shew. I need — I was going to say, some air. hahahaha.