Former WikiLeaks informant Chelsea Manning, who is in pretrial detention for refusing to testify, was hospitalized after a suicide attempt, the New York Times reported, citing her lawyers.
Since May of last year, Manning has been in the detention facility in Alexandria, Virginia. Sheriff Alexandria’s office confirmed that on Wednesday, local time, there was an “incident” involving Manning at the detention facility.
“Professional staff reacted to it properly, Manning is safe”, – the newspaper quotes a statement from law enforcement.
“Her actions today are proof of the strength of her beliefs as well as the serious suffering she continues to endure because of her ‘civilian’ detention”, – Manning’s lawyers said in a statement.
The Virginia court sent Manning to prison in May 2019. Before that, she had already spent two months in prison for refusing to testify and was only at large for about a week after the end of the previous grand jury. The court did not indicate in which case Manning’s testimony was required, but she and her lawyers confirmed that the charges were against WikiLeaks. It was reported that the court could keep Manning in prison until she agreed to testify or until the Jury’s term of office expired again.
American military Bradley Manning was arrested in May 2010 in Iraq, where he was serving. He confessed to handing over to WikiLeaks for publication a video of the air strikes that killed civilians, hundreds of thousands of reports on incidents on the fronts of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, files on Guantanamo Bay detainees, and about 250,000 U.S. Department of State diplomatic dispatches. Subsequently, Manning changed his gender and took the name Chelsea Manning.
The Tribunal sentenced Manning to 35 years in prison in late August 2013. A few days before his resignation, former President Barack Obama commuted the sentence. In May 2017, Manning was released from prison after seven years in prison.