Chelsea Manning to be freed from jail day after suicide attempt

Former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning has been ordered to be released from jail, just a day after she attempted suicide in her Virginia jail cell. 

Manning was ordered by a judge to be released from jail Thursday, where she’s been held for over a year for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury. 

Her testimony is ‘no longer needed, in light of which her detention no longer serves any coercive purpose,’ court filings said.  

‘The court further finds that enforcement of the accrued, conditional fines would not be punitive but rather necessary to the coercive purpose of the Court’s civil contempt order.

‘Accordingly, is hereby ordered that Chelsea Manning be, and she hereby is, immediately released from the custody of the Attorney General,’ court papers said.  

She was held in custody at the Alexandria Detention Center since May for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.

On Wednesday the 31-year-old was found around 1pm in her jail cell where she attempted to hang herself with a sheet. Guards were able resuscitate her and brought her to a hospital where she is recovering.

Manning previously spent seven years in military prison for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified US documents to WikiLeaks in 2010. 

But she told a judge last May she would rather starve to death than change her decision to testify about it in front of a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia.  

Manning, a transgender woman whom supporters call a whistleblower, passed more 700,000 classified documents to WikiLeaks that exposed possible war crimes and internal US communications about other countries. 

Manning’s attorney, Moira Meltzer-Cohen, confirmed her suicide attempt in a statement to DailyMail.com.

‘On Wednesday March 11 Chelsea Manning attempted to take her own life. She was taken to a hospital and is currently recovering,’ she said.

‘Ms. Manning is still scheduled to appear on Friday for a previously calendared hearing, at which Judge Anthony Trenga will rule on a motion to terminate the civil contempt sanctions stemming from her May, 2019 refusal to give testimony before a grand jury investigating the publication of her 2010 disclosures.

‘In spite of those sanctions – which have so far included over a year of so-called “coercive” incarceration and nearly half a million dollars in threatened fines – she remains unwavering in her refusal to participate in a secret grand jury process that she sees as highly susceptible to abuse.’

Meltzer-Cohen said Manning had previously indicated that she ‘will not betray her principles, even at risk of grave harm to herself’.

She added: ‘Her actions today evidence the strength of her convictions, as well as the profound harm she continues to suffer as a result of her “civil” confinement – a coercive practice that the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, recently said violates international law.’