Pretrial hearings in the case against accused WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning are underway, and prosecutors are planning to use newly declassified evidence from the computer of Osama bin Laden in the case against accused WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning, according to Washington Post researcher Julie Tate. What on earth could that be?
One possible answer: After the raid on bin Laden’s compound, there was some speculation that the U.S. was forced to move up its timeframe because the man who led them to Abbottabad — courier Maulawi Abd al-Khaliq Jan — was mentioned in the Wikileaks’ release of notes from the Guantanamo interrogation of a Libyan, Abu al-Libi, who had apparently been with Bin Laden in Afghanistan.
In Manning’s chats with Adrian Lamo, the hacker who turned him in, he mentioned “the Gitmo Papers” as highlights of the information he provided to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.
Today, a judge accepted the potential terms of a partial guilty plea by Manning, which has not yet been formally accepted, that would put him in jail for up to sixteen years for leaking the classified documents. But as the AP reports, “Government officials have not said whether they would continue prosecuting him for the other 15 counts he faces, including aiding the enemy.” The bin Laden evidence, according to one theory, could relate to the aiding the enemy charge, which is punishable by life in prison.
Manning took the stand this afternoon to make his first public statements since being arrested. He is expected to discuss the conditions of his detainment, which the U.N. and Amnesty International have likened to torture, and request that the charges be dropped as a result of his treatment in prison. Manning’s “erratic behavior” led to a “prevention of injury” order that required “being held in his cell for 23 hours a day in solitary confinement, having all his possessions withheld, being checked every five minutes, held overnight with the light on, and at times stripped of all his clothes.”
