Obama defends Manning clemency decision

BARACK Obama has defended his controversial decision to cut nearly three decades off US soldier Chelsea Manning’s prison term for leaking secret documents.

The outgoing US President argued in his final White House press briefing yesterday that the former Army intelligence analyst had served a “tough prison sentence” already.

Mr Obama said he granted clemency Manning because she had gone to trial, taken responsibility for her crime and received a sentence that was harsher than other leakers have received.

The President emphasised he had merely commuted her sentence, not granted a pardon, which would have symbolically forgiven her for the crime.

“I feel very comfortable that justice has been served,” Mr Obama said.

Manning was convicted in 2013 of violating the Espionage Act and other crimes for leaking more than 700,000 classified documents while an intelligence analyst.

Formerly Bradley Manning,shedeclaredastransgender after being sentenced to 35 years in prison. She had served more than six years but will be released in May.

“The notion that the average person who was thinking about disclosing vital, classified information would think that it goes unpunished, I don’t think would get that impression from the sentence that Chelsea Manning has served,” Mr Obama said.

It came as Russia extended residency rights for American Edward Snowden, the Glasgow University rector, who leaked intelligence documents.

He will not be pardoned by Mr Obama.