A military judge was set to deliberate the sentence of American soldier Bradley Manning on Tuesday for leaking troves of classified evidence to anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.
Colonel Denise Lind said she’ll begin deliberating when the court-martial resumes. Manning faces up to 90 years in prison for giving the anti-secrecy group more than 700,000 US military and diplomatic documents and some battlefield video documenting civilian deaths.
On Monday, a prosecutor said Manning should spend 60 years in prison because he betrayed the US by giving classified material to WikiLeaks.
The soldier’s defence attorney didn’t recommend a specific punishment, but suggested any prison term shouldn’t exceed 25 years because the classification of some of the documents Manning leaked expires in 25 years.
The 25-year-old Manning leaked more than 700,000 documents, including Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield reports and State Department diplomatic cables, while working in early 2010 as an intelligence analyst in Iraq. He also leaked video of a 2007 US Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed at least nine people, including a Reuters news photographer and his driver.
A prosecutor said Manning should spend 60 years in prison because he betrayed the US by giving classified material to WikiLeaks
Defence attorney David Coombs said Manning, who was 21 when he enlisted in 2007, had limited experience in life and in the military. His youthful idealism contributed to his belief that he could change the way the world viewed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and all future wars, by leaking the secret files, Coombs said.