President Obama Commutes Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

The soldier who leaked documents to Wikileaks will be released in May

Chelsea Manning

President Obama commuted the sentence of Wikileaks document leaker Chelsea Manning on Tuesday, according to the Associated Press.

Manning is one of 273 inmates who received pardons or commutations from Obama as part of the tradition of outgoing U.S. presidents reducing or lifting sentences during their final days in office. Manning is scheduled to be released from Fort Leavenworth in Kansas on May 17.

In 2010, Manning, then an intelligence analyst for the U.S. Army by the name of Bradley Manning, leaked an enormous batch of classified documents to Julian Assange and Wikileaks that exposed major military and diplomatic activities being conducted by the U.S. government. Among these was a video of a 2007 airstrike conducted by U.S. forces in Baghdad that killed several civilians and two Reuters journalists.

Manning was arrested three months after Wikileaks’ first post of the leaked documents and has been in military prison ever since. In 2013, Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison, the harshest sentence ever handed down for a leak conviction.

Manning’s time in prison made headlines as reports came out alleging that she had been mistreated behind bars. Before her trial, Manning claimed she had been poorly treated by the guards at Marine Base Quantico, who berated her and forced her to sleep without clothing. In 2016, she twice attempted suicide.

Following her conviction, Manning revealed that she was transgender and changed her name from Bradley to Chelsea. She requested a transfer from Fort Leavenworth to a civilian prison, where she could begin her transition. While her transfer was denied, the army did agree to her request to gender reassignment surgery in 2016, an operation that will now be performed after Manning’s release.

Fellow leaker Edward Snowden praised Obama for his decision to grant Manning clemency.

Meanwhile, attention now turns to Assange, who promised via Twitter that he would hand himself over to U.S. authorities if Obama granted Manning clemency. The Wikileaks founder faces sexual assault charges in Sweden and has been staying in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since August 2012 to avoid extradition. Assange thanked Manning’s supporters via the Wikileaks Twitter account.

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