The investigating officer who conducted the military hearing of US Army Private Bradley Manning, accused of leaking top secret US diplomatic cables to whistle-blower website WikiLeaks, recommended Thursday that the accused be subjected to a court martial on the multiple charges pressed against him.
Lt. Col. Paul Almanza, who presided over Manning's Article 32 hearing held at an army base at Fort Meade in Maryland to determine whether the defendant should face trial over the charges, made the recommendation to the Special Court Martial Convening Authority on Thursday.
Almanza's report will now be reviewed by Special Court Martial Convening Authority to decide whether to drop the charges or forward the case to Military District of Washington commander Maj. Gen. Michael Linnington for a final decision.
In his report, Almanza, a former military judge who is now working for the Department of Justice, had concluded that the multiple charges pressed against Manning were in proper form and stated that reasonable grounds existed to believe that the accused had committed the alleged offenses.
Manning faces a life sentence if he does face a court martial and is convicted. The development comes nearly a month after Manning's Article 32 hearing concluded on December 22, with the prosecution and defense attorneys making their closing arguments.
In their final arguments, defense lawyers had portrayed Manning as a troubled young man with gender identity issues. The defense team also accused superiors of failing to provide proper counseling to their client and take disciplinary action or revoke his security clearance. They also requested the investigating officer to drop all but three charges that have the potential to fetch Manning a total of 30 years in prison.
However, the prosecution argued that Manning should be given the maximum punishment as he had used his training "to use multiple intelligence systems" to defy the trust the military had bestowed on him. It was stressed that Manning's actions had made classified information "accessible to the enemies of our nation."
Manning, a former intelligence analyst, was arrested in Iraq in May 2010 and placed in military custody at a high-security military prison at Quantico marine base, Virginia. He was later moved to a lower-security prison at Fort Leavenworth, following criticism about the conditions under which he was being kept after his arrest.
Manning is accused of leaking 720,000 secret US military and diplomatic documents while serving as a US army intelligence analyst in Iraq. He was first charged with 12 counts of downloading a secret video of a US military operation as well as classified military and diplomatic files and cables without authorization and allegedly sharing them with WikiLeaks.
He was later slapped with 22 charges in March 2011. The charges included "aiding the enemy,"which qualifies as a capital offense. However, prosecutors have said that they will not seek death penalty for the defendant. The other charges pressed against Manning relate to leaking intelligence and theft of public records.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is currently fighting a possible extradition from Britain to Sweden over charges of sexual misconduct. Assange is wanted in Sweden for questioning in connection with allegations that he had raped one woman and molested another while on a visit in August, 2010.. He claims that the case is part of a smear campaign aimed at discrediting his controversial website and is politically motivated.
The developments came after WikiLeaks, a website that publishes leaked classified information online, released some 250,000 classified cables sent from US Embassies around the world to several newspapers, embarrassing Washington in the diplomatic front.
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