On Wednesday morning, Chelsea Manning was released from the military prison in Kansas where she had been serving a 35-year sentence, the longest ever imposed for whistleblowing, the New York Times reports. Manning—a private in the United States army—was arrested in 2010 and convicted in 2013 of uploading more than 700,000 government files to WikiLeaks. The leaked files included a video of a helicopter attack that killed Iraqi civilians and two Reuters journalists, and a diplomatic cable detailing the 2006 execution of 10 Iraqi civilians by U.S. troops and subsequent attempts by military officials at a cover-up.
First steps of freedom!! 😄https://t.co/kPPWV5epwa#ChelseaIsFree pic.twitter.com/0R5pXqA1VN
— Chelsea E. Manning (@xychelsea) May 17, 2017
While imprisoned, Manning, who previously went by Bradley, publicly announced that she had transitioned to a woman, and took Chelsea as her first name. She served only seven years of her sentence thanks to the intervention of President Barack Obama, who, during his final days in office, commuted the majority of her remaining sentence. Even the seven-year sentence that Manning served is twice as long a sentence ever received by any other U.S. leaker.
