Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private accused of leaking hundreds of
thousands of classified documents to the whistleblowing website
WikiLeaks, has testified for the first time since he was arrested in May
2010. Speaking Thursday at a pretrial proceeding, Manning revealed the
emotional tumult he experienced while imprisoned in Kuwait after his
arrest in 2010, saying, "I remember thinking, ’I’m going to die.’ I
thought I was going to die in a cage." As part of his testimony, Manning
stepped inside a life-sized chalk outline representing the
six-by-eight-foot cell he was later held in at the Quantico base in
Virginia, and recounted how he would tilt his head to see the reflection
of a skylight through a tiny space in his cell door. Manning could face
life in prison if convicted of the most serious of 22 counts against
him. His trial is expected to begin in February. He has offered to plead
guilty to a subset of charges that could potentially carry a maximum
prison term of 16 years. "What’s remarkable is that he still has this
incredible dignity after going through this," says Michael Ratner, who
was in the courtroom during Manning’s appearance. "But I think all these
prison conditions were — sure, they were angry at Bradley Manning, but
in the face of that psychiatric statement, that this guy shouldn’t be
kept on suicide risk or POI, they’re still
keeping him in inhuman conditions, you can only ask yourself — they’re
trying to break him for some reason. The lawyer, David Coombs, has said
it’s so that he can give evidence against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks."
Ratner is president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights
and a lawyer for Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.Video
Source: Democracy Now!
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