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+--- Thread: The persecution and prosecution of Bradley Manning (/Thread-The-persecution-and-prosecution-of-Bradley-Manning)
The persecution and prosecution of Bradley Manning - Peter Lemkin - 03-04-2013
Birgitta Jonsdottir, Icelandic MP who released the WikiLeaks video Collateral Murder, will visit the US on April 3rd despite legal threats. She said that she has held back from visiting the US long enough, and now she will go there and express support for Bradley Manning. Birgitta posted her agenda for the trip recently on her Facebook page. The agenda can also be found on http://www.bradleymanning.org.
Birgitta Jonsdottir - Agenda for the US visit, April 3rd through April 8th:
Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and filmmaker Michael Moore invite you,
On April 3rd, Icelandic Parliamentarian, activist WikiLeaks contributor and "poetician" Birgitta Jonsdottir is making her first visit to the United States since the release of the "Collateral Murder" video. This video is one of the most graphic and devastating pieces of journalism from the war in Iraq. Bradley Manning, who has now been in jail for over 1000 days without trial, leaked this video to raise awareness.
On Friday April 5th, we invite you to an evening of art and discussion to sow the seeds of resistance against illegal imperialist wars, and to discuss the present state of free speech and freedom of the press. Your presence at Judson Memorial Church would send a clear signal that we the people value truth and stand against the unbelievable lack of ethics and accountability this, and other leaks, consistently reveal.
Doors will open at 5:30 PM, for two hours of drinks, refreshments, and artwork , including stills from Collateral Murder, art prints by Molly Crabapple, and Laura Poitras's five-minute documentary.
Then at 8 PM, we'll move to a discussion among Birgitta, independent journalist Alexa O'Brien, FireDogLake's Kevin Gosztola, and FAIR media critic Peter Hart, moderated by Sam Seder.
See more information about their discussion here, and see how to bid on Molly Crabapple's art prints of Bradley Manning here.
Birgitta and comrades will be speaking in order to raise awareness about Bradley and raise funds for his defense. Along with helping Bradley we would like to help the families in Iraq effected by this war crime, and Ethan McCord the soldier on the scene in the video who helped the injured children he now has severe PTSD. In interest of sparking discussion and more shifts in awareness levels printed stills from the video will be on exhibit for the very first time.
Please come stand with Birgitta Jonsdottir and support hero Bradley Manning and the ethics and values he so clearly embodies.
Icelandic MP Birgitta Jónsdóttir
The persecution and prosecution of Bradley Manning - Peter Lemkin - 04-04-2013
Iceland Member Of Parliament Birgitta Jonsdottir Has Arrived Safely In NYC Without Incident And Is Safe. A Warm Welcome From Anonymous USA.
Daniel Ellsberg and Michael Moore invite you to a Bradley Manning event with Birgitta Jonsdottir Bradley Manning Support Network
March 23, 2013. Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg invites you to a Bradley Manning event in New York CIty, on April 5, 2013, featuring Icelandic MP Birgitta Jonsdottir, who worked with WikiLeaks to publish the Collateral Murder video in 2010. Read here for information about the event, how to RSVP, and Birgitta's other events that week. ...
http://www.bradleymanning.org
The persecution and prosecution of Bradley Manning - Peter Lemkin - 07-04-2013
A Bradley Manning event with Birgitta Jonsdottir, Icelandic MP - VIDEO
Saturday, 06 April 2013 11:44
"His message, his statement, is so powerful, and it feels to me that he is not broken. And that shows what an extraordinary person he is." said Birgitta Jonsdottir at the Bradley Manning event yesterday, and received an applause for the audience. She continued "And I truly think that one of the reasons that he is not broken is because he knows of all of us out here that are fighting for him".
Birgitta Jonsdottir, Wikileaks volunteer, member of the Icelandic Pirate Party and member of the Icelandic parliament, is currently in the US to show support for Bradley Manning. The Bradley Manning event was held yesterday at the Judson Memorial Church in New York, on Friday April 5th.
The description of the event is as follows:
Daniel Ellsberg and Michael Moore invite you to a Bradley Manning event with Birgitta Jonsdottir
On Friday April 5th, we invite you to an evening of art and discussion to sow the seeds of resistance against illegal imperialist wars, and to discuss the present state of free speech and freedom of the press. Your presence at Judson Memorial Church would send a clear signal that we the people value truth and stand against the unbelievable lack of ethics and accountability this, and other leaks, consistently reveal.
Doors will open at 5:30 PM, for two hours of drinks, refreshments, and artwork , including stills from Collateral Murder, art prints by Molly Crabapple, and Laura Poitras's five-minute documentary.
Then at 8 PM, we'll move to a discussion among Birgitta, independent journalist Alexa O'Brien, FireDogLake's Kevin Gosztola, and FAIR media critic Peter Hart, moderated by Sam Seder.
The persecution and prosecution of Bradley Manning - Peter Lemkin - 10-04-2013
Jónsdóttir: If Bradley Manning Had Leaked State Secrets in Iceland, He'd Have Been a Hero
By: Kevin Gosztola Tuesday April 9, 2013 10:29 am
Icelandic Parliament Member Birgitta Jonsdottir
Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir, who has been a target of the United States' government's wide investigation into WikiLeaks, visited the US to show her support for Pfc. Bradley Manning.
She was involved in the release of the "Collateral Murder" video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad, Iraq, that was released just over three years ago. During her visit, she participated in multiple speaking events and spoke with US media interested in speaking with her.
Jonsdottir was here for five days. I participate in a panel event with her and others in New York City on Friday, April 5 (that can be viewed here).
I interviewed her while she was here. Part 1 of our interview was already published. Here is Part 2.
*
KEVIN GOSZTOLA: In being here in the United States and following how the Bradley Manning case is covered and taking notice of how the US population reacts to his case, what do you think about that in comparison to how people have reacted in Iceland or other countries?
BIRGITTA JONSDOTTIR, Icelandic MP: Many people say he's a traitor and he should be killed and hung. I read it and it is very disturbing because it's sort of a reflection of a mentality that I don't think it is normal. It's a very weird mentalitysolution to a problem is to go and kill people or torture them or to waterboard them. It's Middle Ages. It's unacceptable in modern societies.
The only thing I have to say to people that claim this is that I understand that the government went into panic when the leaks were coming because they probably had no idea if it came from higher. They should have known, because according to what I have heard, he did not leak that was the highest classified stuff.
GOSZTOLA: Not top secret.
JONSDOTTIR: Right, it was Daniel Ellsberg who leaked that stuff. It is Ellsberg who is the hero and he was fortunate to not be in the military yet he was leaking to the general public stuff that people really needed to know about the government's behavior in order to keep the government honest. I don't see any difference except what Bradley Manning has been accused of doing is a lot less serious and people are saying he should die because of this.
I can understand that he might get some sentence. I understand that, but he's served in prison for like more than a 1000 days and he's been tortured. Isn't that enough? Haven't they gotten enough revenge? Do they want to pull out his teeth? Or put him in the electric chair? What sort of barbaric society thinks like this? And I don't know anybody in the United States who thinks like this so I don't really know where these people come from.
GOSZTOLA: This zeal, this wanting of deathit's not in these countries that you've talked about?
JONSDOTTIR: In Iceland, we have much less prison sentences. We don't use prisons to keep people, to forget about them. Or, we don't use prisonsEven if you possess a little bit of drugs for your own use, you're not really put in prison for that. We recognize that this war on drugs can never be won. And, we recognize that a prison should not be a storage place for problems. The biggest aim for someone to go to prison is get the person to get some sentence but the other thing is how to help that person assimilate back into society because it's really expensive for society to have completely dysfunctional people coming out of prisons and these really long sentences hereThis is not really traditional European. It's more like Iran.
The way the prison sentences here are really high like what we're seeing with Jeremy Hammond. Forty-five years in prison?
GOSZTOLA: And they want Barrett Brown to go to prison for 105 years.
What do you think about the idea that if Bradley Manning was not in the military there would not be so many calls for him to be put to death?
JONSDOTTIR: Do these people that request thisthat the state becomes the executordo they find it acceptable how many people have died in meaningless wars? What was the reason why the US went into Iraq? Oh, weapons of mass destruction. And like has the guy who lied to the UN actually been held accountable? Have the people we have seen with our own eyes committing war crimes, have they been held accountable? Or their superiors? Or the people pissing on dead people held accountable? Or raping children? Have they been held accountable?
The pride of militaryYou can be proud of your country, but you have to be proud for the right things. I used to look at the United States and was fascinated by many aspects of your society but they're almost all gone. And now the world looks at the United States as similar to China.
I'd just encourage people to do everything in their power to turn it around and I know you can because you have so many brilliant, brilliant people in this country.
GOSZTOLA: In Iceland, if you had someone like Manning and there was this need to hold someone accountable for violations, would there be a zeal against that person similar to what exists in this country? There seems to be such lawlessness in this country. Is there a problem of rampant lawlessness in Iceland?
JONSDOTTIR: I have live most of my life in Iceland but I have also lived in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and the UK. So, I have a fairly good perspective of how things are and I think the stronger the military establishment, the worst off the civic society will be.
In Iceland, we're fortunate that we don't have a military so we don't ever have to teach our children how to kill a person. And, it makes a huge difference.
I've studied another society like this, the Tibetans. It's just an entirely different mentality if you don't have to indoctrine your children that it's okay to kill people, that you have to have this absolute rigid loyalty to something you might feel to be wrong in your heart and I think it does something really bad to nations.
If Bradley Manning would have leaked this stuff in IcelandSince we don't have a military, if he would have leaked other sensitive state secrets that should have been in the public domain, like videos from police interrogations, he would be a hero.
GOSZTOLA: You would like people participate in the organization of actions during his trial. What can you say about your vision to have mass action in the US?
JONSDOTTIR: I would like to encourage anybody who has any time to spare to organize in his hometown an event that would be around the time or on the date when the trial starts. So, I would like people to show the "Collateral Murder" video or show it in halls or their homes. They can do guerrilla video. They can take photos if they see stencils, like "Blowing a Whistle is Not a Crime." They can host readings, re-read his statement. They can show different documentaries but would need to upload to similar website like the Global Voices website.
I want to have larger events in three cities like New York, Washington, LA or San Francisco and then people upload that they've done an event on Tumblr or Twitter and we collect information on these events. We can send a strong message to Bradley Manning that we've not forgotten and we appreciate what he's done. We are not going to accept that he will rot in jail for the rest of his life. Enough is enough.
The persecution and prosecution of Bradley Manning - David Guyatt - 10-04-2013
Icelandic Parliament Member Birgitta Jonsdottir had better begin watching her back if you ask me.
Uncle Sam doesn't take kindly to politicians from other nations meddling in its own internal affairs.
Usually, it's too busy meddling in the internal affairs of other nations to notice, but this sort of coverage will draw it's eye.
Heart attacks, brain tumours, cancer and other suicide-ation techniques are part of its battery of political influence.
The persecution and prosecution of Bradley Manning - Peter Lemkin - 10-04-2013
You can watch an extended interview with Birgitta Jonsdottir, done a day ago,part one here, and part two here. I can only wish we had people in my government as good, honest, brave, and fighting for such a high level of Truth and Justice! She puts most in most Congresses and Parliaments to shame, IMHO.
The persecution and prosecution of Bradley Manning - Carsten Wiethoff - 11-04-2013
From http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/hearing-for-gi-in-wikileaks-case-focuses-on-evidence-ruling-on-bin-laden-raid-pending/2013/04/10/f04255e8-a1ae-11e2-bd52-614156372695_story.html
Quote:By Associated Press, Apr 11, 2013 03:17 AM EDT
AP Published: April 10
FORT MEADE, Md. A military judge cleared the way Wednesday for a member of the team that raided Osama bin Laden's compound to testify at the trial of an Army private charged in a massive leak of U.S. secrets to the WikiLeaks website.
Col. Denise Lind ruled for the prosecution during a court-martial pretrial hearing for Pfc. Bradley Manning at Fort Meade, near Baltimore.
Prosecutors say the witness, presumably a Navy SEAL, collected digital evidence showing that the al-Qaida leader requested and received from an associate some of the documents Manning has acknowledged sending to WikiLeaks.
Defense attorneys had argued that proof of receipt wasn't relevant to whether Manning aided the enemy, the most serious charge he faces, punishable by life imprisonment.
The judge disagreed.
"The government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the intelligence is given to and received by the enemy," Lind said.
The ruling means prosecutors can call the witness during the "merits," or main, phase of the trial. They otherwise could have used his testimony only for sentencing purposes.
The witness has been publicly identified only as "John Doe" and as a Defense Department "operator," a designation given to SEALs. Prosecutors say he participated with SEAL Team Six in their May 2011 assault on the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in which the terrorist leader was killed. His testimony would help establish a chain of custody for the evidence from its recovery to its analysis by a computer expert.
Lind ruled later in the hearing that John Doe must testify in civilian clothing and "light disguise" in a closed session at an alternate, secure location to prevent disclosure of his identity or details of the mission. The disguise cannot obscure his demeanor, body movements and facial reactions.
The persecution and prosecution of Bradley Manning - Magda Hassan - 30-06-2013
US v Pfc. Manning | Nicholas Murphy Unclassified Stipulation, 117 Charged State Dept Cables with Links
By Alexa O'Brien on June 27, 2013 9:51 PM |The following cables were listed in the stipulation of testimony of Mr. Nicholas Murphy, Senior Advisor for the Office of Information Program (I.P.S.), Bureau of Administration at the Department of State. Murphy conducted a classification review of 117 cables charged against Manning under the Espionage Act - 18 U.S.C. 793(e).
There are 117 charged Department of State Cales or Telegrams. They are listed below. 96 cables, Murphy said, were classified CONFIDENTIAL in whole or part, and 21 are classified at SECRET in whole or in part.
I thank Joanne Michele and Data Porn Star for helping me format this information with links.
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- [url=http://www.alexaobrien.com/secondsight/wikileaks/bradley_manning/]Bradley Manning
The persecution and prosecution of Bradley Manning - Magda Hassan - 03-07-2013
US government rests its case in Bradley Manning WikiLeaks trial
Admission that army has mislaid standard contract signed by private boosts defence hopes of having some charges dismissed
- Ed Pilkington at Fort Meade
- guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 3 July 2013 07.08 AEST
The US government rested its case against the WikiLeaks source,Bradley Manning on Tuesday, bringing to an end the prosecution phase of the most significant criminal trial of an official leaker in at least a generation.
In the fifth week of the trial proper, and more than three years after Manning was arrested for leaking the largest stash of state secrets in US history, Major Ashden Fein closed the government's case against the Army private. The defence case will start on Monday, beginning with a motion to have some of the 22 charges against Manning dismissed on the grounds of lack of evidence.
In the course of more than four weeks of intermittent testimony, the prosecution has hit a number of legal hurdles, including conflicting testimony and paucity of concrete evidence. The most embarrassing admission was that the Army had mislaid the standard contract Manning signed that laid out the terms of his access to classified information upon deployment to Iraq.
In defence cross-examination of a prosecution witness, it was revealed that the government had lost one copy of the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) that Manning had signed and had routinely burned a second copy filled out by the soldier and all other members of his unit. The document is important as it clarifies whether or not the soldier exceeded the terms of the authorised access to secret documents through his work computer that he directly agreed to.
Manning's lead defence lawyer, David Coombs, is likely to use the missing documents as grounds for having some of the charges dismissed. The AUP could be relevant to charges that Manning knowingly exceeded authorised access to a secret internet network, that he obtained classified information without authorisation and that he violated the computer fraud and abuse act.
The government has struck other legal impediments in seeking to establish its main case that Manning had a "general evil intent" to "aid the enemy" by passing valuable US secrets to WikiLeaks, knowing that they would reach al-Qaida and its affiliated terrorist organisations. Prosecution lawyers have tried to show that Manning's decision to transmit a vast trove of more than 700,000 state documents was calculated and premeditated and not, as the defence argues, provoked by some of the disturbing experiences he had in Iraq.
To that end, prosecutors told the court that Manning's first transmission of classified information began within days or weeks of his arrival at Forward Operating Base Hammer, outside Baghdad, in November 2009. They tried to link Manning to a copy of a video of a US airstrike earlier that year, on the village of Garani in the Farah Province of Afghanistan, that was placed on to the computer of a systems administrator called Jason Katz at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island in December.
But defence cross-examination of a key prosecution witness, special agent David Shaver, revealed that the Katz video did not match footage of the same Garani airstrike that was stored on Manning's workstation in Iraq. Manning indicated in earlier proceedings that he would admit to having leaked his copy of the Garani video in April 2010 five months after he got to Iraq. But prosecutors refused to budge on their November 2009 timeframe, prompting Manning to plead not guilty to this count.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at Ecuador's embassy in London, where he has been for almost a year. Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPAThe government has also encountered problems seeking to prove that the army private entered into a conspiratorial relationship with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. Prosecutors have pointed to the 2009 "Most Wanted List" compiled by WikiLeaks, which identified the most significant secrets that a crowd-sourced list of experts wanted to see disclosed. The government alleges that the list was used by Manning as a menu that guided his trawling of secure intelligence databases for information to leak. But no evidence was presented to court that Manning had ever read the list, let alone adopted it, and its status remains purely circumstantial.
Similarly, the prosecution cited a WikiLeaks tweet from May 2010, in which the anti-secrecy organisation put out an appeal to its Twitter followers for as many military email addresses to be leaked as possible. The government alleges a link between that tweet and a list of tens of thousands of email addresses that was found on Manning's personal computer. Yet the soldier never transmitted the list to WikiLeaks, and no evidence has been presented to court that he saw the WikiLeaks tweet in the first place.
The most serious charge, aiding the enemy, carries a maximum sentence of life in custody without parole. In pre-trial hearings the judge, Colonel Denise Lind, ruled that to make the charge stick the government must prove that Manning knowingly gave intelligence information, via WikiLeaks, to al-Qaida and its affiliates, including al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. Crucially, Lind has set the prosecution the challenge of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Manning had "a general evil intent", in that he "had to know he was dealing, directly or indirectly, with an enemy of the US". The soldier cannot be found guilty if he acted "inadvertently, accidentally, or negligently".
Whether or not the prosecution succeeds in meeting that high bar set by Lind will have far-reaching implications, not just for Manning, whose fate depends on it, but also for the wider relationship in the US between government, whistleblowers and a free press. The Obama administrationhas launched seven prosecutions under the Espionage Act, which Manning is also facing, more than double the number initiated by all previous presidents combined.
Manning has already pleaded guilty to lesser charges that carry a combined maximum sentence of 20 years. He has admitted to being the WikiLeaks source, and to acting in a way that was prejudicial to good order and discipline and that brought discredit upon the armed forces.
Such a substantial admission of responsibility has failed to satisfy military prosecutors, who are clearly determined to send a bold message that will give any would-be leaker pause. The aggression displayed by the US government has additional current significance given Edward Snowden's predicament as he attempts to avoid capture by US authorities to face Espionage Act charges for leaking National Security Agency state secrets.
Paradoxically, one of the most significant pieces of evidence presented by the prosecution to show that Manning had knowledge of the danger of his actions was a classified report that was among the trove he passed to WikiLeaks. The 32-page document was released by WikiLeaks in March 2010 and gave the conclusions of a major investigation by US counter-intelligence into WikiLeaks itself.
The government argues that having leaked the report, Manning must have been familiar with its content. The report states that WikiLeaks was a threat to the US army.
"The intentional or unintentional leaking and posting of US army sensitive or classified information to Wikileaks.org could result in increased threats to DoD personnel, equipment, facilities, or installations," the report said. "Such information could be of value to foreign intelligence and security services (FISS), foreign military forces, foreign insurgents, and foreign terrorist groups for collecting information or for planning attacks against US force, both within the United States and abroad."
​http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/02/bradley-manning-wikileaks-trial-government-rests?CMP=twt_gu
The persecution and prosecution of Bradley Manning - Magda Hassan - 03-07-2013