The US soldier accused of being behind the massive
WikiLeaks publication of state secrets has been awarded a 112-day reduction in any eventual sentence on the grounds that he was subjected to excessively harsh treatment in military detention.
Colonel Denise Lind, the judge presiding over
Bradley Manning's court martial, granted him the dispensation as a form of recompense for the unduly long period in which he was held on suicide watch and prevention of injury status while at the brig at Quantico marine base in Virginia where he was detained from 29 July 2010 to 20 April 2011.
During that time he was held under constant surveillance, had his possessions removed from his cell and at times even his clothes, often in contravention to the professional medical opinion of psychiatrists.
Lind's ruling was made under Article 13 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice that protects prisoners awaiting trial from punishment on grounds that they are innocent until proven guilty. The recognition that some degree of pre-trial punishment did occur during the nine months that the soldier was held in Quantico marks a legal victory for the defence in that it supports Manning's long-held complaint that he was singled out by the US government for excessively harsh treatment.
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