A military judge today found US soldier Bradley Manning not guilty of aiding the enemy – the most serious charge among many he faced for handing over documents to WikiLeaks.
But Col. Denise Lind, in her verdict, found Army Private First Class Manning, 25, guilty of 19 of the other 20 criminal counts in the biggest breach of classified information in the nation’s history.
The US government was pushing for the maximum penalty for the intelligence analyst’s leaking of information that included battlefield reports from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It viewed the action as a serious breach of national security, while anti-secrecy activists praised it as shining a light on shadowy US operations abroad.
Army prosecutors contended during the court-martial that US security was harmed when the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy website published combat videos of an attack by an American Apache helicopter gunship, diplomatic cables and secret details on prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay that Manning provided to the site while he was a junior intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2009 and 2010.
Manning, who early this year pleaded guilty to lesser charges that carried a 20-year sentence, will still be looking at a long prison term when the trial’s sentencing phase gets under way on Wednesday.
«This is a historic verdict,» said Elizabeth Goitein, a security specialist at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice.
«Manning is one of very few people ever charged under the Espionage Act prosecutions for leaks to the media … Despite the lack of any evidence that he intended any harm to the United States, Manning faces decades in prison. That’s a very scary precedent,» she added.
A crowd of about 30 Manning supporters had gathered outside Fort Meade ahead of the reading of the verdict.
Source: Buenos Aires Herald