Alleged WikiLeaker Bradley Manning: “What Have I Done To Deserve This?”
For the first time since Bradley Manning was arrested last year, the young army private who allegedly leaked millions of secret documents to the secret-spilling site WikiLeaks has described, in the first person, the conditions of his detainment. According to his own account, that treatment includes being stripped of his clothes nightly, intimidated by guards and kept on suicide watch, despite repeated admissions from the brig’s officials that he shows no signs of planning suicide.
In the statement, which was published on the blog of Manning’s lawyer David Coombs, Manning responds to his detainers’ rejection of a plea that he be taken off the suicide watch list and have his detention status reduced from “maximum” to “medium.” He cites a half dozen reports from psychiatrists in the Quantico brig where he’s being kept, saying that he shows no signs of mental imbalance or suicidal thoughts. The psych reports describe him as “well-spoken,” “neat in appearance,” and displaying a “mood and appearance…consistent with his normal character.”
He goes on to describe how, after a September protest outside of the Quantico facility and an intimidating run-in with guards giving him contradictory orders, the brig commander James Averhart visited his cell. Manning says Averhart told him that he was the commander and that “no one can tell him what to do.”
“He also said that he was, for all practical purposes, ‘God,’” Manning’s report reads. Manning says Averhart placed him on official “Suicide Risk” status.
Read it at -
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2011/03/10/alleged-wikileaker-bradley-manning-what-have-i-done-to-deserve-this/