President Barack Obama is ending his last week of presidency with a controversial decision. Just days before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, Obama commuted Chelsea Manning’s prison sentence.
Manning, an Army intelligence analyst, leaked information on global military activities. She was convicted in 2013 will leave prison on May 17 this year. The four-month delay is a standard transition period, according to senior administration. They claim this allows them to find Manning a home for after her release.
She served 7 out of her 35-year sentence at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Her sentence is the longest conviction in U.S. history for leaking information. Although her sentence is reduced with Obama’s commutation, her conviction was not pardoned.
Because of the commutation, the Defense Department is no longer responsible for holding Manning in a male prison while she undergoes her sex transition. Manning, previously known as Bradley, is seeking sex reassignment surgery, which the military has no experience handling. While in prison, they only allowed her to take cross-sex hormones and wear women’s undergarments and light cosmetics.
WikiLeaks, who received Manning’s 750,000 pages of documents and videos, claims Obama’s decision is a ‘victory.’ Included in the leak was a classified video of a U.S. helicopter attacking Iraqi civilians and journalists in 2007. The video, dubbed “Collateral Murder,” received backlash from human rights activists.
Included in the documents were Afghanistan and Iraq War incident logs, which exposed unrecorded civilian deaths, and Iraqi officers working with the U.S. military to abuse detainees. She also copied approximately 250,000 diplomatic cables that revealed confidential deals and documents showing officials held Guantanamo Bay detainees without trial. Manning disclosed the information to WikiLeaks to incite ‘worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms.’
Along with Manning, Obama pardoned 63 other people and announced 207 other commutations. While most of those cases involve drug offenders, Marine general James E. Cartwright and Puerto Rican nationalist group member Oscar Lopez Rivera were included, as well.
