Bradley Manning Sentenced To 35 Years In Prison – Hosbeg.com

Bradley Manning, the Army private who leaked very confidential United States information has been sentenced to 35 years in prison.

Mannings sentence was handed to him Wednesday by a military judge at a court in Fort Meade, Maryland.

In addition to Mannings 35 years in jail, the Army private will also be dishonorably discharged and forfeit all his benefits as a member of the U.S. Army. He will also have his rank reduced from an Army private to the level of private E-1 or PVI, which is said to be lowest rank in the Army.

Manning is not expected to serve the entire 35 years since 3.5 years will have to be subtracted from it because of the number of days he had been detained prior to receiving his sentence and because of the harsh treatment he went through while being detained in Quantico, Va.

25-year-old Manning is expected to be illegible for parole after having served about one-third of his jail term.

According to reports from the Associated Press, during the sentences, Manning did not show any physical or emotional reaction even though his supporters expressed utter shock.

What was Mannings crime?

Manning is responsible for the largest leak of United States confidential information in the entire history of the country.

Manning personally gave thousands of classified United States military and sensitive diplomatic documents to Wikileaks. He was subsequently charged with the crime of aiding the enemy, espionage, theft, computer fraud and several other crimes.

Manning was fortunate to have been acquitted of the crime of aiding the enemy. Had he been convicted of that crime, he stood a chance of spending the rest of his life behind bars because that crime carries a possible life sentence with no chance of parole.

What landed Manning the 35 years in prison was the fact that he was found guilty of computer fraud, six espionage counts, five federal theft charges and several other military infractions.

Mannings fate was decided by a judge instead of a military jury because Manning chose the former. Judge Denise Lind, an Army Colonel handed Manning 35 years in jail even though prosecutors fought for Manning to be sentenced to 60 years because of his grave crime of betraying his country.

Manning is expected to be released from prison in eight years time, providing he exhibits good behavior while in jail.

Manning was enlisted in the U.S. Army in 2008 and assigned to an army unit near Baghdad in 2009 where he worked as an intelligence analyst. By the nature of his work, he had access to the databases that the United States government used in transmitting very sensitive and classified information. Somehow Manning was able to download some of the classified documents which he later passed on to the WikiLeaks website. Some of the materials that Manning passed to WikiLeaks include videos of the 12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrike, the 2009 Granai airstrike in Afghanistan, 250,000 United States diplomatic cables, and the Iraq and Afghan War logs.

He was arrested in May 2010 after a computer hacker Adrian Lamo whom he had confided in exposed him to the FBI.

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Bradley Manning Sentenced To 35 Years In Prison - Hosbeg.com