Chelsea Manning will be released from prison this week - and she’s looking forward to hugs, warm spring air and swimming

This week, after seven years, Chelsea Manning will walk out of military prison a free woman. Edward Snowden leads the tributes, and tells how Manning ‘left behind the safety of silence to speak a truth that saved lives’

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US Army Private Bradley Manning who would later become Chelsea Manning. Photo: AFP

Published: 12:55pm, 14 May 2017Updated: 10:08pm, 14 May 2017

On Wednesday, some time after dawn, the security gates at the US disciplinary barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, will be thrown open and a slight woman will walk out into the open air and freedom.

For Chelsea Manning, release from military incarceration will mark a colossal turning point. Having been arrested seven years ago when she was an unknown, lowly and outwardly male soldier, she will emerge into an entirely new life as a civilian, a celebrity, and an openly transgender woman.

The day will be momentous in ways that go far beyond its huge personal ramifications for its subject. Manning’s discharge, a parting gift of President Barack Obama as one of his final acts in office, will bring to an end one of the more shameful chapters in US military history.

Watch: Obama shows clemency to Chelsea Manning

It began with the humiliating breach that saw vast quantities of state secrets downloaded by a relatively junior army private from supposedly secure intelligence databases on to a Lady Gaga CD. It passed through the harsh treatment of the perpetrator in the military brig in Quantico, Virginia, denounced by the UN as a form of torture. And it was capped by the imposition of the longest prison sentence ever recorded in the US for an official leak: 35 years in military prison.