If the U.S. government wants the book thrown at Bradley Manning for leaking government communications to WikiLeaks, it'll have to dot the i's and cross the t's.
The US government will have to prove that the WikiLeaks source, Bradley Manning,
had "reason to believe" that his disclosure of state secrets could be
harmful to the US and beneficial to foreign nations, the judge presiding
over the soldier's court martial ruled on Wednesday.
The ruling
from Colonel Denise Lind, sitting in a military court at Fort Meade in
Maryland, raises the burden of proof for the prosecutors who are trying
to have the US soldier jailed for life for his actions in passing
hundreds of thousands of classified state documents to the anti-secrecy
website WikiLeaks. Manning has pleaded guilty to the leak, but only to
lesser charges that carry an upper sentence of 20 years in military
jail.
Lind stressed that to be found guilty, Manning would have to be shown
beyond reasonable doubt to have knowingly dealt with an enemy of the
US. The crime could not be inadvertently or accidentally committed, she
said.
That could be encouraging. Especially since he told that informant that he thought the war was bad for the USA and that he wanted to spark a conversation.
ReplyDeleteHopefully his defense team will do a good job.
He did world a favour by exposing the atrocities of U.S in Iraq. Now the world must speak out.
ReplyDeleteThis man showed a lot of humanity.