WikiLeaks Suspect No Longer in Solitary*
Bradley Manning moved from Quantico to Kansas detention center.
By Josh Voorhees
Posted Friday, Apr. 29, 2011
Bradley Manning, the U.S. soldier accused of providing hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks, will no longer be held in solitary confinement.
The Army announced Thursday that Manning was transferred last week from the Quantico Marine base in Virginia to a detention center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.
At the Kansas facility, Manning will be housed with other medium-security military prisoners who are awaiting trial. He will have his own 80-square-foot cell, wear standard prison clothing and have access to communal areas during the day, according to the AP.
His new living conditions represent a drastic improvement from how he was treated at Quantico, where he was held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, "stripped naked each night and given a suicide-proof smock in which to sleep," USA Today reports.
The move suggests that the military no longer believes that Manning is a suicide risk, which was the official reason that military officials gave for his isolation and treatment at Quantico.
Manning’s attorneys and supporters called those conditions inhuman and excessively harsh, and Amnesty International said that the military’s treatment of Manning may have violated his human rights. His transfer comes slightly more than a week after a U.N. torture investigator complained that he was denied a request to meet with Manning in private at Quantico.
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.
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bradley_manning_wikileaks_suspect_no_longer_in_solitary_army_say.html#
