August 13, 2015

Chelsea Manning faces solitary torture for minor infractions

Salon - According to Buzzfeed News, national security leaker and transgender rights activist Chelsea Manning is facing indefinite solitary confinement for a number of prison infractions, including possessing the edition of Vanity Fair featuring Caitlyn Jenner.

Manning, formerly known as Bradley Manning before her transition, was an intelligence analyst who was sentenced to 35 years in Fort Leavenworth in 2013 after leaking more than 700,000 classified documents to Wikileaks that she acquired while stationed in Iraq.

Manning is being charged with violating prison rules, including possessing prohibited items like the Caitlyn Jenner issue of Vanity Fair, “I am Malala,” the Senate torture report, Transgender Studies Quarterly, and copies of The Advocate and Out Magazines. She is also being charged with possessing a tube of expired toothpaste, which falls into the category of “medicine misuse.”

She has also been accused with nearly hitting a corrections officer by sweeping some food off the table during dinner, and then responding impertinently to the corrections officer when he addressed the incident.

Her attorney Nancy Hollander told the AP that Manning will face a hearing in front of a three-person panel in Fort Leavenworth Prison on August 18. Counter to Manning’s requests, the hearing will be closed to the public. The maximum penalty for these charges is indefinite solitary confinement, a practice that has been extensively critiqued in recent years as research indicates that the psychological effects of solitary are akin to torture.

1 comment:

Greg Gerritt said...

Torture seems to be the modus operandi of the US government. I think the US government has long since passed into being a criminal enterprise.