Manning is UK citizen and needs protection. Bradley Manning, who is being held in a military jail and charged with the unauthorised use and disclosure of classified information. Photograph: AP The British government is under pressure to take up the case of Bradley Manning, the soldier being held in a maximum security military prison in Virginia on suspicion of having passed a massive trove of US state secrets to WikiLeaks, on the grounds that he is a UK citizen. Amnesty International called on the government to intervene on Manning's behalf and demand that the conditions of his detention, which the organisation calls "harsh and punitive", are in line with international standards. Clive Stafford Smith, director of Reprieve, which provides legal assistance to those facing capital punishment and secret imprisonment, likened the conditions under which Manning is held to those in Guantánamo Bay.
Manning is a UK citizen by descent from his Welsh mother, Susan. Born in the US, he is a US citizen. Bradley Manning's military doctors accused over treatment | World news. A Bradley Manning supporter takes part in a protest outside the US state department this week. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images A leading group of doctors in the US concerned with the ethical treatment of patients has questioned the role of military psychiatrists in Quantico, Virginia, where the suspected WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning is being subjected to harsh treatment that some call torture.
The advocacy body Physicians for Human Rights has sounded the alarm over the role of psychiatrists at the brig in the marine base where Manning has been in custody since last July. The group sees the psychiatrists as trapped in a situation of "dual loyalty", where their obligations to the military chain of command may conflict with their medical duty to protect their patient.
Christy Fujio, author of a forthcoming report on the issue, said the main concern was that psychiatrists were allowing Manning's continuing solitary confinement. Bradley Manning: Cruel and unusual | Editorial. It is now nearly a decade since 9/11, and in the aftermath of that atrocity the US "lost a little of its greatness", in the words of one courageous military lawyer, David Frakt. Mr Frakt was protesting to a military commission of "the pointless and sadistic treatment of … a suicidal teenager", a Guantanamo inmate put in solitary, then systematically sleep-deprived by being shifted from cell to cell every couple of hours. There was at least the ghost of an excuse for bullying and sometimes torturing Arab and Afghan "combatants". It was done in the name of saving American lives. There is no such need for the cruel mistreatment now reported as being practised on one of their own, the diminutive US private Bradley Manning. Every five minutes he is required to answer that he is fit and, if he turns his face away while asleep, he is immediately forcibly woken up.
So far, the reaction of the Obama administration to the leaks has been relatively measured. 'You can hear Bradley Manning coming because of the chains' | Media. It is difficult to get in to see the imprisoned Bradley Manning, who is currently kept in chains as though he were a wild animal. However David House regularly sets out for the military prison holding the diminutive (5ft 2in) US army private. House, a 23-year-old computer researcher friend from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, leaves Boston every couple of weeks on a Friday afternoon after work: "I immediately run home and grab my army rucksack, throw in a bunch of socks and loose clothing, hop on an Amtrak train to Washington DC.
It's a seven to eight hour train ride. " Riding the overnight train, one of the things House says he tries to put out of his mind is the hate mail resulting from his part in the campaign to support the solitary young man accused of being the "hacktivist" behind all the notorious recent publications of Wiki-Leaks. "I receive probably 10-15 pieces a day. It's quite a lot, but only one or two a week are actual death threats. " BM & the stench of US hypocrisy. Bradley Manning was forced to sleep naked in his cell, according to his lawyers. Photograph: EPA Earlier this week, the soldier accused of leaking thousands of confidential documents to WikiLeaks, Bradley Manning, was handed an additional 22 charges as part of his ongoing court martial process.
The 23-year-old, who has been in solitary confinement for more than seven months, stands accused of computer fraud, theft of public records and willfully communicating classified information to a person not entitled to receive it. He now also finds himself faced with a rare charge known as "aiding the enemy" – a capital offence for which he could face the death penalty. The revelation will no doubt have come as a blow to Manning, although given his ongoing treatment it is likely he already feared the worst. While there has been widespread and well publicised condemnation of issues surrounding Manning's detainment, his conditions have failed to improve.