Intelligence leaker Chelsea Manning speaks out ahead of prison release
Source: Reuters
U.S. | Tue May 9, 2017 | 3:34pm EDT
By Chris Kenning
A transgender soldier has issued her first statement since former President Barack Obama commuted her 35-year prison sentence for leaking intelligence, saying on Tuesday she wants to help others after her release from prison next week.
Chelsea Manning, 29, has served nearly seven years in a military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, after being convicted of leaking more than 700,000 classified documents, videos, diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts to anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks in 2010, the biggest such breach in U.S. history.
Her case became both the focus of debate over government secrecy and a rallying cause for civil liberties advocates, who saw the punishment as too severe and an attempt to chill whistleblowers from speaking up about government misdeeds.
"For the first time, I can see a future for myself as Chelsea. I can imagine surviving and living as the person who I am and can finally be in the outside world," Manning said in a statement released by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-wikileaks-manning-idUSKBN1852AN
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