US withheld email evidence in WikiLeaks case: defence
Lawyers for the US soldier charged with passing a trove of classified
documents to WikiLeaks accused the military on Tuesday of withholding
hundreds of emails over fears of a publicity nightmare.
The defence team for Private Bradley Manning, who could be jailed for
life for “aiding the enemy” over the massive security breach, alleged
that more than 1,300 messages were ignored by prosecutors for at least
six months.
The emails relate to the conditions the 24-year-old trooper was held
in during military detention at Quantico, Virginia, where he was sent
after a spell in a US Army jail in Kuwait following his arrest while on
duty in Iraq in 2010.
Manning’s civilian lawyer David Coombs told a pre-trial hearing that
84 emails were released to the defence team on July 25, but he later
discovered that 1,290 other messages remained on file. The government
“chose to let these emails collect dust somewhere,” Coombs said on the
first day of the three-day hearing at a military base in Fort Meade,
Maryland, 48 kilometres from the US capital. Military prosecutors then
suddenly announced that 600 other messages had been handed to Manning’s
legal team on Monday, ahead of the hearing, but Coombs persisted with
his attack.
“It is the defence position that the government has been playing word
games,” the lawyer said, implying that the emails were held back because
the government adopted a deliberately narrow definition of their
relevance. “That is the absurd nature of that excuse. That is ‘the dog
ate my homework’ excuse,” Coombs added. The defence maintains that
Manning was mistreated at Quantico, and even alleged on Tuesday that the
former intelligence analyst had been ordered by guards to stand at
attention while completely naked. Coombs then took aim at top Marine
officers responsible for running the jail, who he said had put their
concerns about bad publicity ahead of their duty to provide fair
treatment to detainees.
The emails go as high up the chain as General George Flynn, the then
commanding general of the US Marine Corps, who insisted that Manning be
placed on suicide watch.
Top officers at Quantico regularly sent emails to Flynn informing him
of Manning’s confinement, which the defence says was unnecessarily
harsh, and told the Marine commander who the jailed WikiLeaks suspect’s
visitors were. “They didn’t want any negative publicity,” Coombs said,
reading out an official list that placed media risks at the top of eight
concerns at Quantico. After his detention at the Marine Corps Brig from
July 2010 to April 2011, Manning was transferred to a prison at Fort
Leavenworth in Kansas, where he was placed under less restrictive
conditions.
If the court finds he was abused, the case could potentially be
thrown out, or any eventual sentence reduced. However, Major Ashden
Fein, lead counsel for the government at Fort Meade, denied that the
emails were withheld, insisting the prosecution simply had more pressing
issues to deal with. Most of the emails amount to nothing more than
“argument and conjecture” among the military commanders involved, he
said. “They were concerned about public affairs (media handling) but
they were also concerned about Private First Class Manning,” Fein said
of officers at Quantico, describing Flynn as “being informed but not
necessarily directing” control. - AFP
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