Chelsea Manning Tries to Kill Herself in Jail, Lawyers Say …

Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst who was jailed last year for refusing to testify before a grand jury that is investigating WikiLeaks, has been hospitalized after she attempted suicide on Wednesday, according to her lawyers.

Ms. Manning, 32, is currently recovering, according to her lawyers, who did not say how Ms. Manning tried to kill herself while at a detention center in Alexandria, Va., where she has been held since May.

The Alexandria Sheriffs Office confirmed only that there was an incident involving Ms. Manning at 12:11 p.m. and said, It was handled appropriately by our professional staff and Ms. Manning is safe.

A statement from Ms. Mannings legal team said she was still scheduled to appear on Friday at a hearing before Judge Anthony Trenga of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

At the hearing, the judge is expected to rule on whether to end the civil contempt sanctions imposed on Ms. Manning after she refused to testify before a grand jury investigating the publication of thousands of American military and diplomatic files that she had provided to WikiLeaks in 2010.

Ms. Manning was also detained for two months starting in March 2019 for refusing to testify, then briefly released when that grand jurys term ended taking advantage of the window to announce that she had a book deal that she said would focus on her personal life. But prosecutors subpoenaed her again for testimony before a new grand jury, and she again refused to testify and was locked up again.

In spite of those sanctions which have so far included over a year of so-called coercive incarceration and nearly half a million dollars in threatened fines she remains unwavering in her refusal to participate in a secret grand jury process that she sees as highly susceptible to abuse, said the statement from Ms. Mannings legal team.

Ms. Manning has previously indicated that she will not betray her principles, even at risk of grave harm to herself, the statement said.

Joshua Stueve, a spokesman for the office of the United States Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, declined to comment.

A federal prosecutor had previously said that the Justice Department did not want to have Ms. Manning detained, but she had a legal obligation to testify before a grand jury when subpoenaed.

Ms. Manning has attempted suicide at least two previous times, both in 2016 once while in solitary confinement at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., which was itself a punishment for an earlier attempt to end her life that year.

Her actions today evidence the strength of her convictions, as well as the profound harm she continues to suffer as a result of her civil confinement, Ms. Mannings lawyers said in their statement on Wednesday.

The grand jury investigation is part of a long-running inquiry into WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, that dates to the Obama administration and which the Trump administration revived.

Ms. Manning said that when she appeared before the grand jury, prosecutors had asked her questions about WikiLeaks, but she refused to answer every question, saying it violated her constitutional rights.

In a letter last year to Judge Trenga, Ms. Manning described the investigation as an effort to frighten journalists and publishers, who serve a crucial public good.

Before her current incarceration, Ms. Manning served seven years in a military prison, including 11 months of solitary confinement, the statement said.

She was originally convicted in 2013 of providing more than 700,000 government files to WikiLeaks, exposing American military and diplomatic affairs around the world.

President Barack Obama intervened in her case in 2017, commuting all but four months of her 35-year sentence.

Last year, the Justice Department unsealed criminal charges against Mr. Assange, who had been holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London but was arrested. Prosecutors initially charged him with a narrow hacking conspiracy offense, for purportedly agreeing to try to help Ms. Manning crack a password that would have let her log onto a military computer system under a different user name, and cover her tracks.

But prosecutors later drastically expanded the case against Mr. Assange by bringing charges against him under the Espionage Act for soliciting, receiving and publishing classified information an unprecedented effort to deem such journalistic activities (a separate issue from the debate over whether Mr. Assange himself counts as a journalist) as crimes that raise novel First Amendment issues. Mr. Assange has been fighting extradition in a London court.

The criminal case against Mr. Assange does not involve his later actions in publishing Democratic emails, stolen by Russian hackers, during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Sandra E. Garcia and John Ismay contributed reporting.

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Chelsea Manning Tries to Kill Herself in Jail, Lawyers Say ...