Lawyers for the soldier at the center of the largest intelligence leak in United States history asked the government to acquit their client on the most serious of charges as the defense began its turn at arguing in favor of the WikiLeaks source Monday. Six weeks after the military trial of Private first class Bradley Manning began in Ft. Meade, Maryland, attorneys for the Army intelligence analyst opened their case by playing a 39-minute video shared by the soldier with WikiLeaks showing a US Apache helicopter opening fire on civilians and journalists outside Baghdad. That footage, published by the whistleblower website in April 2010 under the name “Collateral Murder” and considered by many to be a turning point in the Iraq War, is one document among many that government prosecutors say Manning leaked with intent to aid to international Islamist terror group al-Qaeda. The 25-year-old soldier’s attorneys have long attested otherwise, however, and in the wake of the prosecution calling their final witness to testify last week, Manning’s counsel requested Monday that the government drop charges of aiding the enemy and other counts among the two-dozen-plus that have left the Army private looking at potentially a life in prison. Col. Denise Lind, the presiding judge in the court-martial that’s been more than three years in the making, has until later this week to decide if the court will honor the defense’s request to acquit Pfc. Manning on aiding the enemy, a Computer Fraud and Abuse Act charge, a charge relating to federal larceny and another that has left the soldier accused of stealing the contact info of US forces in Iraq. Meanwhile, the defense began calling their first witness in the courtroom Monday morning, then spent nearly ten hours blowing through a list of other individuals they hope will help their case. Following weeks of testimony from the likes of roughly 80 witnesses called by the prosecution, the defense opened Monday’s hearing by requesting those acquittals, then calling soldiers who worked alongside Manning during his deployment in Iraq to speak to the conditions in the military unit where the WikiLeaks source surrounded himself in classified intelligence that he quickly accumulated and then dissipated to the anti-secrecy website... rt/usa/manning-defense-wikileaks-fort-meade-809/
Posted on: Tue, 09 Jul 2013 03:39:01 +0000
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