Tag Archives: Speedy

Army forced to release documents related to secretive Bradley Manning case

Published time: February 27, 2013 21:14

TagsCourt, USA, WikiLeaksAfter over one-thousand days of secretive legal proceedings, the United States government has released a small portion of the thousands of pages of courtroom documents from the case against alleged WikiLeaks source Pfc. Bradley Manning.Manning, a 25-year-old Army intelligence specialist, was
arrested in May 2010 and accused of passing hundreds of thousands
of sensitive military documents to the anti-secrecy whistleblower
site while working as an intelligence officer in Iraq. The soldier
is scheduled to be formally court-martialed beginning this June and
could be sentenced to life in prison for his role in providing
WikiLeaks with privileged material. Since details from the
pre-trial motion hearings have been scarce, however, little has
been known publically about the government’s prosecution until
now.On Wednesday, the Military District of Washington informed
members of the press that 84 judicial orders and rulings from the
pre-trial hearings have been reviewed, redacted and
uploaded to a military-run website where they can be viewed
“In response to various Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
requests and inquiries from news agencies.” The trove so far
includes minor legal rulings regarding Pfc. Manning’s proposed
plea, court orders sent to mental health professionals and other
rulings made by the judge.The Army says that the seven-dozen documents published on
Wednesday make up just a small sampling of the more than 500 files
that have already been either filed by attorneys for both sides in
the matter or the military judge presiding over the case, Col.
Denise Lind. In all, those documents total more than 30,000 pages,
and the Army says materials will be continuously published online
as they are prepared for release. They warn the media, however,
that “due to the voluminous nature of these documents,” it
could be a long time coming before the rest of the papers are
vetted appropriately for publication.The statement from the military comes just one day after Col.
Lind ruled that although Pfc. Manning has been detained for over
1,000
days, the government did not
violate the speedy trial statute in the military’s Rules for
Courts-Martial. Lind admitted to the court that delays in the case
have occurred in part due to the continuous efforts the government
has undertaken to audit the trove of documents relevant to the
case, but said the defense was not hindered by the slow-moving
trial. David Coombs, the civilian defense attorney for Pfc.
Manning, had unsuccessfully asked the judge to dismiss all charges
against his client due to the lingering, nearly three-year
process.Previously, Coombs implored
the court to free Pfc. Ma
2000
nning by arguing that the treatment his
client endured while detained in a military brig after being
captured was tantamount to torture. Lind agreed, in part, and said
112
days will be subtracted off of any sentence handed to the
officer. When Coomb’s latest request was declined, however,
journalist Ed Pilkington wrote for
The Guardian that the government’s absurd quest for total
secrecy has left Manning to stand trial in an “Alice-in-Wonderland
world.”“Lind spent an hour and a half without pause reading out a
judgment that must have stretched to 50 pages, at a rate that
rendered accurate reporting of it diabolically difficult,” he
said of Lind’s response to Coomb’s last unsuccessful appeal. “No
copy of the ruling has – then or now – been made available to the
public, presumably on grounds of national security, even though
every word of the document had been read out to the very public
that was now being withheld its publication.”“This prosecution, as it is currently conceived, could have a
chilling effect on public accountability that goes far beyond the
relatively rarefied world of WikiLeaks,” Pilkington wrote. Only
hours later, the Army said they would start releasing courtroom
filings.Last May, the Center for Constitutional Rights sued the US
government over the lack of transparency in the Manning trial.
“Public scrutiny plays a vital role in government
accountability. Media access to the Manning trial proceedings and
documents is critical for the transparency on which democratic
government and faith in our justice system rests,” CCR Legal
Director Baher Azmy said in a
statement when the petition against the Army Court of Criminal
Appeals was filed. Additionally, a legal brief urging the
government to release documents was filed last September and
endorsed by The Associated Press, Atlantic Media, Dow Jones,
Gannett, Hearst, CNN, McClatchy, The New York Times, The New York
Daily News, Reuters, the Washington Post and other media
outlets.Pfc. Manning is expected to testify on Thursday this week when
he is scheduled to formally offer a plea. He may avoid a life
sentencing by pleading guilty to lesser charges.Share on Tumblr … Read More