Manning jailed for refusal to testify in WikiLeaks case
WASHINGTON: Chelsea Manning, who spent more than three years in prison for leaking US military secrets to WikiLeaks, was jailed again Friday for refusing to testify in a grand jury investigation targeting the antisecrecy group.
US District Judge Claude Hilton ruled Manning in contempt of court and ordered her held not as punishment but to force her testimony in the secret case, according to a spokesman for the US attorney in the Alexandria, Virginia federal court.
“Chelsea Manning has been remanded into federal custody for her refusal to provide testimony,” said a statement from the Sparrow Project, a support group for Manning.
They quoted Hilton as saying Manning would be held indefinitely “until she purges or the end of the life of the grand jury.”
In a statement, Manning said she had “ethical” objections to the grand jury system and had answered all questions about her involvement with WikiLeaks years ago.
“I stand by my previous testimony,” Manning said.
“I will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been historically used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech.”
Manning, 31, was ordered to testify earlier this week for an investigation examining actions by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in 2010, according to her own description, inadvertent court revelations and media reports.
At the time Manning, a transgender woman then known as Bradley Manning, was a military intelligence analyst.
She delivered more than 700,000 classified documents related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan into WikiLeaks’s hands.
The documents exposed cover-ups of possible war crimes and revealed internal US communications about other countries. — AFP