Bradley Manning treatment called ‘illegal and unconstitutional’
April 11th, 2011 - 1:35 pm ICT by ANIWashington, Apr 11 (ANI): Over 250 of America’s leading legal scholars have described the treatment of American soldier Bradley Manning, who has been accused of leaking classified cables to WikiLeaks, as illegal, unconstitutional and amounting to torture.
Manning has been charged on 34 counts, including illegally obtaining 250,000 US government cables and 380,000 records related to the Iraq War. He is being held in solitary confinement in a maximum security military prison.
The letter published in the New York Review of Books, claims his treatment is a violation of the US Constitution, specifically the amendment which forbids cruel and unusual punishment and an amendment which prevents punishment without trial, The Telegraph reports.
“The administration has provided no evidence that Manning’s treatment reflects a concern for his own safety or that of other inmates,” the letter states.
“Unless and until it does so, there is only one reasonable inference, this pattern of degrading treatment aims either to deter future whistleblowers, or to force Manning to implicate WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in a conspiracy, or both,” the letter adds.(ANI)
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Tags: american soldier, cables, conspiracy, cruel and unusual punishment, degrading treatment, inference, inmates, iraq war, julian assange, legal scholars, letter states, maximum security, military prison, new york review of books, solitary confinement, telegraph, us constitution, whistleblowers