Obama pardons WikiLeaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning
Barack Obama pardoned WikiLeaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning in his final days as US president. Julian Assange’s lawyer has confirmed that the WikiLeaks CEO is willing to extradite to the US because of this decision.
The whistleblower is serving a 35-year sentence for leaking classified military and diplomatic information, but will now be released early on May 17. Obama made the announcement Tuesday night, The New York Times reported.
On Wednesday, the lawyer for Julian Assange, the Australian founder of WikiLeaks, said Assange would be willing to extradite to the United States if Manning was pardoned, The Guardian writes. Last year it was already known that Assange would be willing to do this. WikiLeaks repeated that last week in a tweet. Assange has one trust to win every fair trial in the United States. He has been in the embassy of Ecuador since August 2012 in London.
Whistleblower Edward Snowden, who lives in exile in Russia, has Obama on Twitter thanks for Manning’s early release. A spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry has said that Snowden will be allowed to stay in Russia for two more years and will not be extradited to the United States during this period.
Obama also pardoned US General James Cartwright on Tuesday, say a New York Times reporter. This senior soldier had denied to a federal commission of inquiry that he was the source for a New York Times article about the Stuxnet attack. In October 2016, he admitted that this denial was a lie. He was sentenced to two years in prison, but that sentence has now been waived.
Chelsea Manning was arrested as a US Army soldier in Iraq in May 2010 for passing stolen military and diplomatic information to WikiLeaks. In total, more than 700,000 documents and videos were involved. US authorities were tipped off about Manning by hacker Adrian Lamo. The ex-soldier was convicted in 2013 of, among other things, espionage, theft and computer fraud, but was acquitted of treason.
After this conviction, Manning decided to go through life as a woman. In September 2016, Manning went on a hunger strike, after which the US military finally authorized a sex change operation. Earlier, in July 2016, Manning had made a failed suicide attempt in her cell.