Attorneys for Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence officer who provided secret military information to Wikileaks, on Wednesday launched a new legal bid to free her from prison.
Manning has been jailed since May for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks, a shadowy organization that publishes leaked information online.
Defense attorneys wrote in a motion for release that Manning has no new information to offer the grand jury and a prison sentence will not coerce her to testify.
“She has reiterated her refusal to cooperate with the grand jury process before this court, and has now reiterated her refusal to cooperate with the grand jury process before this Court, and has now reiterated that refusal every day for more than eleven months,” her attorneys wrote in the filing in the Eastern District of Virginia.
“There is no reason to believe she will at this late date experience a change of heart, there is a profusion of evidence that she will not,” they continued.
Initially jailed in March, Manning was released in May, only to find herself back in prison a week later. Her second time in jail was ordered after she again insisted she would not cooperate with the grand jury probe.
District Judge Anthony J. Trenga ordered Manning to be fined $500 for every day she remains in custody for 30 days, and $1,000 for every day after that.
Manning’s attorneys say her refusal is rooted in an objection to the grand jury process that won’t change.
“She is convinced that to cooperate with this grand jury would be a betrayal of her beliefs about the grand jury process in general, and this grand jury in particular,” they wrote. “She has always been prepared to suffer the consequences for her beliefs in this regard, and in light of her history, it should surprise nobody to find that she has the courage of her convictions.”
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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