Pretrial Wraps Up for Alleged Document Leaker

FORT MEADE, Md., Dec. 22, 2011 — The pros­e­cu­tion and defense rest­ed today after deliv­er­ing their clos­ing state­ments in the Arti­cle 32 hear­ing of a sol­dier charged with leak­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of clas­si­fied doc­u­ments.

Today’s ses­sion, which adjourned at about 10:30 a.m., wrapped up eight days of pre-tri­al pro­ceed­ings in the case against Army Pfc. Bradley E. Man­ning that began Dec. 16.

An Arti­cle 32 hear­ing, often com­pared to a civil­ian grand jury, is a pre­tri­al hear­ing to deter­mine if grounds exist for a gen­er­al court mar­tial, the most seri­ous of courts martial.

The inves­ti­gat­ing offi­cer, Army Lt. Col. Paul Alman­za, now has until Jan. 16 to issue his rec­om­men­da­tions to the Spe­cial Court Mar­tial Con­ven­ing Author­i­ty, a Mil­i­tary Dis­trict of Wash­ing­ton spokesper­son told Amer­i­can Forces Press Service.

Ala­man­za may ask for an exten­sion, if need­ed, the offi­cial said.

His report will rec­om­mend that the case be referred to a court mar­tial, or that some or all of the charges against Man­ning be dismissed.

The Spe­cial Court Mar­tial Con­ven­ing Author­i­ty, Army Col. Carl Coff­man, will then pro­vide Alamanza’s rec­om­men­da­tion to the Gen­er­al Court Mar­tial Con­ven­ing Author­i­ty, and indi­cate whether he con­curs with it, the MDW offi­cial said.

Man­ning, an intel­li­gence ana­lyst, is sus­pect­ed of leak­ing mil­i­tary and diplo­mat­ic doc­u­ments to the whis­tle-blow­ing web­site Wik­iLeaks in what offi­cials believe is the biggest intel­li­gence leak in U.S. history.

Wik­iLeaks, in turn, released thou­sands of these doc­u­ments, includ­ing clas­si­fied records about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, on its web­site last year.

At the time, then-Defense Sec­re­tary Robert M. Gates and oth­er senior defense offi­cials con­demned the organization’s actions, claim­ing the act put deployed ser­vice mem­bers at an increased risk.

The Arti­cle 32 hear­ing marked 24-year-old Manning’s first appear­ance in a mil­i­tary court since his arrest in Iraq in May 2010.

He faces more than 20 charges alleg­ing he intro­duced unau­tho­rized soft­ware onto gov­ern­ment com­put­ers to extract clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion, unlaw­ful­ly down­loaded it, improp­er­ly stored it, and trans­mit­ted the data for pub­lic release and use by the enemy.

The charge of aid­ing the ene­my under Arti­cle 104 of the Uni­formed Code of Mil­i­tary Jus­tice is a cap­i­tal offense; how­ev­er, the pros­e­cu­tion team has said it won’t rec­om­mend the death penal­ty, a legal offi­cial said.

If con­vict­ed of all charges, Man­ning would face a max­i­mum pun­ish­ment of life in prison. He also could be reduced to E‑1, the low­est enlist­ed grade, face a total for­fei­ture of all pay and allowances and dis­hon­or­able dis­charge, offi­cials said. 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

Face­book and/or on Twit­ter

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →