Bradley Manning, the former Army private accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables and army reports, is expected to testify at his pretrial hearing.
Manning will appear before a military court in Maryland to avert a trial, arguing that he was subjected to “unduly onerous confinement conditions” and “unlawful pretrial punishment,” reported NBC News on Tuesday.
It is expected that he will address how he was locked in a small cell alone for nine months at a military prison in Quantico, Va. He was also forced to sleep naked for several nights, which his lawyers have said is an illegal form of punishment, claiming that it can cancel his trial.
Manning’s treatment has been panned by the United Nations rapporteur on torture, Amnesty International, and others.
“For nine months, he was kept in complete isolation from other prisoners,” Manning supporter Jeff Paterson told NPR (National Public Radio).
“He had really no human interaction at all except for guards that would yell at him every five minutes saying, ‘Are you OK?’” Paterson added. “Basically, it was a way to use the pretense of mental health concerns to literally drive him crazy.”
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