Chelsea Manning tried to end her life for the second time since she was sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking State secrets to WikiLeaks. The former Army intelligence analyst made public her second attempt of suicide, which she tried October 4. Manning has alleged that people in the Fort Leavenworth prison are trying to make her commit a crime.
Manning first tried to end her life in July, for which she was punished and put in solitary confinement for a week. She tried to commit suicide the first week in solitary. Chelsea Manning stated her story over a phone call to a member of her volunteer support network and asked them to make it public through The New York Times, the anonymous members of the organization said.
Manning wrote four pages were she narrates her attempt to kill herself on the first night of her week in solitary detention. After her suicidal behavior, she was transferred to a special observation unit, Alpha Tier, where she continued to be in isolation but better watched to avoid another attempt.
American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, Chase Strangio, is representing Ms. Manning and confirmed the second attempt of suicide because his client asked him to do it. Chelsea Manning was known as Bradley Manning, but he changed his name after her conviction and requested to be referred using female pronouns.
Strangio has publicly criticized the Army for putting his client in solitary confinement as punishment for trying to end her life because it would only worsen her mental health. To add insult to injury, a support network member stated Thursday that Ms. Manning was informed that the Army was going to hold a disciplinary hearing for her second attempted suicide. Manning could be facing new punishment.
An Army spokesman stated he could not comment on the case because the information was related to medical information, which is illegal to share due to privacy rules.
Manning’s sentence is the longest ever imposed on a person for leaking government secrets. She made public diplomatic cables from American embassies around the world, incident logs from Iraq and Afghanistan wars, information about Guantanamo Bay, and most outraging, a video of a helicopter airstrike in Baghdad that killed two Reuters journalists. The former intelligence analyst delivered the information to WikiLeaks. Open-government activist considered her a hero, but others consider her a traitor as the law does.
Manning’s statement alleges there is an intelligence operation that wants to torment her psychologically to make her commit a crime
Chelsea Manning’s four-page statement said that four people pretended to be guards and carried an attack on the prison on the night of October 10. She said she heard shootings and the screams of the actual guards of her cellblock. Then the attackers tried to convince her to escape, but Manning said she refused to do it.
In the statement, she narrates that she hid in the corner of her cell and added she faced the attackers and told them that she knew they were impostors. At 06:00 a.m. on October 11 she continued and said that a regular shift of guards that she recognized arrived at their shift and that everything returned to normal, but added that several specialists were cleaning the entire Alpha Tier with Pine Sol and bleach.
Manning supporting network said she addressed the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General October 17 to asked the inspector general to open an investigation on the situation she described in her statement alleging it was all part of an intelligence operation that seeks to torment her and induce her to commit a crime.
The office of the inspector general said they could not comment on the case.
Source: The New York Times