A Dangerous Precedent

Three years after his arrest in Iraq, having already suffered a string of abuses, some even considered by Amnesty International to be torture, Bradley Manning was sentenced yesterday to 35 years in prison for his role in the largest leak of classified documents — close to 700,000, which he supplied to the organization WikiLeaks — in the history of the U.S.

The American soldier will have to spend a third of his sentence behind bars before he becomes eligible for parole. Furthermore, the verdict reduced his military rank and denied his right to receive pay or allowances from the Army. His lawyer has decided to request a presidential pardon for the 25-year-old; however, given that Barack Obama has declared an all-out war on leaks that could endanger the security of the U.S., it is unlikely that he will concede the pardon. In any case, the sentence seems out of proportion, and it may even hurt the credibility of the American justice system.

Although Manning broke many of the laws and rules of the military institution he served, his friends, family and strangers alike agree that his actions, far from deserving such a drastic sentence, deserve recognition. Not only do they represent the values of honesty and equality found in his country’s Constitution, they also sparked a necessary debate in the U.S. regarding the horrors of war — the first step toward preventing them from happening again.

Assigned in 2009 to an intelligence post in Iraq in charge of analyzing information, the soldier, then only 22-years-old, discovered a series of abuses committed by the Army and decided to make them public with the help of Julian Assange. Manning confessed to his friend Adrian Lamo that he had seen “almost criminal political back dealings … incredible things, awful things … things that belonged in the public domain and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington, D.C.” Lamo was shocked by the enormity of the situation and reported him to the authorities.

During the case against him, in an attempt to intimidate and set an example, the American justice system blew the dust off the crime of aiding the enemy, which had not been used since the Civil War of 1861. Furthermore, the prosecution based its strategy on the Espionage Act of 1917, under which there had only been one prior conviction.

That is why civil rights organizations have declared the 35-year sentence an attack on freedom of speech and freedom of the press that seeks to set a dangerous precedent. Calling the leaking and publication of secret information treason indiscriminately and without proof will certainly cripple the checks and balances that keep the Obama administration under control as well as seriously threaten freedom of information.