US Army soldier Chelsea Manning, serving 35 years in prison for passing classified files to WikiLeaks, was ordered to spend 14 days in solitary confinement as punishment for attempting suicide and keeping a banned book in her cell, supporters said.
A disciplinary board at the Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, military prison where Manning is being held informed her of the decision after a hearing on Thursday, according to a statement released on Friday by Fight for the Future, a group supporting her.
Manning said in the statement that she may appeal the punishment and that seven days of it would be suspended provided she stays out of trouble for six months. There was no set date for the discipline to start, she said.
“I am feeling hurt. I am feeling lonely. I am embarrassed by the decision. I don’t know how to explain it,” Manning said.
An Army spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment by phone or email.
Manning, 28, is a transgender Army private who was born male and revealed after being convicted of espionage that she identifies as a woman. She tried to take her own life in July after what her lawyers said was the Army’s denial of appropriate healthcare.
This month, Manning went on a hunger strike, agreeing to end it only when the Army said she would be allowed to receive gender transition surgery. She began hormone therapy in 2015.
A lawyer for Manning, Chase Strangio of the American Civil Liberties Union, questioned the logic of “our systems of incarceration punishing people with the cruelty of solitary for attempting to end their life.”
Manning has been a focus of a worldwide debate on government secrecy since she provided more than 7,00,000 documents, videos, diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.
The case ranked as the biggest breach of classified materials in US history. Manning, a former intelligence analyst in Iraq, in 2013 drew a 35-year prison sentence. Military parole rules could allow her to leave prison after serving seven years.
Among the files Manning leaked in 2010 was a gunsight video of a US Apache helicopter firing on Iraqis in 2007, an attack that killed a dozen people, including two Reuters news staffers.
Manning said the prohibited book in her prison cell was Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy by Gabriella Coleman, about the computer hacker group Anonymous.
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