US Army 'withheld e-mail evidence in Bradley Manning WikiLeaks case'
WikiLeaks accused's defenders say messages kept secret for fear of a publicity nightmare
Lawyers for the US soldier charged with passing a trove of classified documents to WikiLeaks have accused the military of withholding hundreds of e-mails over fears the evidence would cause a publicity nightmare.
The defence team for Private Bradley Manning, who could be jailed for life for "aiding the enemy" over the massive security breach, said more than 1,300 messages were withheld by prosecutors for at least six months.
The e-mails relate to the conditions the 24-year-old trooper was held in during military detention at Quantico, in the state of Virginia, where he was sent after a spell in a US Army jail in Kuwait following his arrest while on duty in Iraq in 2010.
The publishing by WikiLeaks of official documents, including military logs concerning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, triggered a diplomatic firestorm that embarrassed American officials and rankled the nation's allies. Manning was the alleged source.
Manning's civilian lawyer, David Coombs, told a pre-trial hearing that 84 e-mails were released to the defence team in July 2011, but he later discovered 1,290 other such messages had not been passed on to him.
The government "chose to let these e-mails collect dust somewhere", Coombs said on the first day of the three-day hearing at a military base in Fort Meade, in the state of Maryland.
Military prosecutors then suddenly announced that 600 other messages had been handed to Manning's legal team on Monday, ahead of the hearing, but Coombs persisted with his attack.
