Bradley Manning, the turncoat U.S. Army private accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, is unhappy with his jailers. Poor baby doesn’t like his pillow and wants his MTV, so his attorney has officially complained that Manning is being mistreated.
CNN.com has the details:
His lawyer, David Coombs, formally objected to Manning’s treatment, filing an Article 138 complaint Wednesday, according to a posting on the lawyer’s blog. Manning has been in solitary confinement and for part of this week was again placed on suicide watch by the Quantico brig commander, according to his lawyers.
“He was stripped of all clothing with the exception of his underwear. His prescription eyeglasses were taken away from him,” Coombs wrote in the blog entry. “He was forced to sit in essential blindness with the exception of the times that he was reading or given limited television privileges. During those times, his glasses were returned to him.”
… Manning is confined to his cell 23 hours a day with no pillow, sheets or personal items, according to Coombs.
His only exercise, according to his lawyer, is when he is taken to an empty room and allowed to walk. When he sleeps he must strip to his underwear and surrender his clothing to the guards.
Hard as this may be for you to believe, the military dismisses Coombs’ complaints and says they’re much ado about nothing:
Quantico public affairs officer Lt. Brian Villiard said under military rules he could not confirm whether the complaint had been received. He said all the conditions of Manning’s confinement are in line with his maximum custody status and to prevent Manning from harming himself.
“He is not being treated any differently than anyone else in maximum custody,” Villiard said. “We’re not treating him any differently than anyone who could pose a risk to life, property or national security.”
In December, a Pentagon spokesman said that even under the restrictive conditions, Manning is allowed to converse with other prisoners, receive visitors and exercise for an hour a day. In addition, Manning has pillows and sheets made from a material that cannot be torn into strips, according to Villiard.
We realize that the purpose of waterboarding is to coerce secrets out of a prisoner, but in the case of Manning we’d say the waterboarding should be applied retroactively for all the secrets he’s already spilled.
Be glad we’re not your jailers, Bradley.
Source: CNN.com
