Prison officials have decided U.S. Army Private Chelsea Manning should spend at least 7 days in solitary confinement after she attempted to take her own life earlier this year in the midst of serving a 35-year sentence for sharing classified materials with the website WikiLeaks, her attorney said Friday.
Members of an administrative disciplinary board in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas handed the soldier a 14-day stint in solitary with seven days suspended after finding Manning guilty of two counts during a hearing Thursday held in response to her recent suicide attempt, according to a statement circulated by her lawyer, Chase Strangio of the American Civil Liberties Union.
“I am feeling hurt. I am feeling lonely. I am embarrassed by the decision. I don’t know how to explain it,” the soldier said in the statement.
Manning, 28, was found unresponsive inside her prison cell on the morning of July 5 and taken to a nearby hospital before being returned to the disciplinary barracks at Fort Leavenworth. She later learned that she was being investigated over the incident and faced indefinite solitary confinement as a result of her actions.
The three-member disciplinary board found the soldier guilty Thursday on charges of “conduct which threatens” and “prohibited property.” She was acquitted of a third charge related to the prison’s decision to deploy a specialized team to her cell upon learning of her suicide attempt.
The soldier’s attempt on her life “interfered with the good order, safety and running of the facility,” prison officials said with respect to the conduct charge. The prohibited property charge was brought after jailers discovered a book in the soldier’s cell that she had not been specifically authorized to have — “Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy,” by Gabriella Coleman, a professor of anthropology at McGill University.
Manning said she’ll have 15 days to appeal the board’s decision once its formalized, and could begin serving her stint in solitary at any time. She’ll serve 7 days in “disciplinary segregation,” she said, and would have to serve an additional week in solitary if she commits any further violations during the next six months.
Mr. Strangio and the ACLU both referred to the soldier’s official statement when reached Friday by The Washington Times.
Manning was deployed as an intelligence analyst outside of Baghdad when she began supplying the antisecrecy website WikiLeaks with sensitive documents in early 2010.
She leaked hundreds of thousands of documents before she was arrested that May, including diplomatic State Dept. cables and detailed accounts of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. She was found guilty by court-martial in 2013 of charges including espionage and theft, and has so far served six of her 35-year sentence.
Previously known as Bradley Manning, the soldier began publicly identifying herself as a transgender woman immediately following her sentencing and legally changed her name the following year. The Pentagon agreed in 2015 to begin providing her with hormone treatment, and last week said it would let the soldier seek gender transition surgery from behind bars. She remains incarcerated at an all-male facility.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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