US army whistleblower Bradley Manning has now been charged with “communicating, transmitting and delivering national defence information to an unauthorised source”. Manning, an army intelligence analyst, was arrested in May over the leaking of the so-called “Collateral Murder” video, which shows a US helicopter gunning down civilians during a July 2007 raid in Iraq.
Manning now faces a possible 52-year jail sentence if convicted. Manning, 22, who sat his GCSEs in Wales after his mother returned to Britain from the US in 2001, was spurred to investigate the video when he saw footage of an unarmed man attempting to rescue one of the wounded.
He said later: “It was unreal… I mean, I’ve identified bodies before. It’s rare to do so, but usually it’s just some nobody. It humanised the whole thing, re-sensitised me.” An international network of solidarity has been set up by US anti-war activists, to collect funds for his legal defence among other things.