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In reply to the discussion: ERIC HOLDER TO RUSSIA: We Will Not Torture Or Seek The Death Penalty For Edward Snowden [View all]Katashi_itto
(10,175 posts)Immediately upon his arrest on May 26, 2010, Manning was transferred to an 8 x 8 x 8 wire mesh cage in Kuwait with just a toilet and a shelf to keep him company. He had confessed online to a supposed confidant earlier in the week that he had submitted compromised intelligence to WikiLeaks, only for that correspondence to be handed to the FBI.
I just thought I was going to die in that cage. And thats how I saw itan animal cage, he told the judge as he testified for the first time.
Once in Baltimore, Pfc. Manning was loaded into a car and transferred to the military base in Quantico, Virginia. There he was held for nine months in maximum custody in a cell smaller than the one he saw overseasjust 6' x 8'. For only 20 minutes a day, Pfc. Manning was left to see the sunlight while shackled in chains. Other times, he found that if he arched his neck and angled himself just right he could catch the reflection of the sun from a window that was mirrored into his unimaginable concrete hellhole. Once inside his isolation chamber for the customary 23-and-a-half hours or so, he was deprived of just about everything, including contact with other inmates and often his clothes. He was forced to sleep from 1 PM to 11 PM, naked, and was allowed to do so only when facing his lamp.
"I started to feel like I was mentally going back to Kuwait mode, in that lonely, dark, black hole place, mentally," he said.
The most entertaining thing in my cell was the mirror. You can interact with yourself. I spent a lot of time with it, he told the court on Thursday
When a forensic psychiatrist was eventually commissioned to assess Manning at the brig, repeated recommendations were made to remove him from protected watch, which left him forced to cover himself with only a suicide smock and bedding that resembled something between a cardboard box and a liquidation sale rug. Those professional suggestions were all ignored in favor of the guards own instincts. Many of those staffers testified that they were trained in corrections for one month at an Air Force base in Texas and rightfully admitted that the guidelines for dealing and assessing with a suicide case they were taught there were thrown out the window when Private Manning arrived.
At Quantico, Pfc. Manning treatment wasnt by the book: the sleep depravation and stripping of clothes; the humiliation; the taunts and mockery; the nine months of putting Pfc. Manning in protected custody citing concerns over suicideconcerns that were rebuffed relentlessly by both Pfc. Manning himself and qualified psychiatrists. Thats why Coombs is looking to have the case against his client thrown out, and Mannings own testimony this week only accentuated the living nightmare he was made to endure for nearly a year while only a half-hour drive from the capital of the nation