WikiLeaks Suspect Manning Back in Court
U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning, accused of spilling U.S. secrets to WikiLeaks, was back in court Saturday after a failed defense bid to get the presiding officer dismissed from the case.
Manning, who turned 24 on Saturday, is facing charges which could potentially send him to prison for the rest of his life and the hearing on this sprawling U.S. military base outside Washington is being held to decide whether he should face a court-martial.
The second day of the pre-trial hearing was scheduled to start at 10:00 am (15:00 GMT) but for unexplained reasons did not begin until 10:35 am (15:35 GMT).
The presiding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Almanza, was forced to call a recess within 10 minutes, however, because of difficulty hearing a conference call with the first witness called by army prosecutors.
The witness, a special agent with a military police detachment in Hawaii, was on a cellphone and she was barely audible on a speakerphone in the courtroom.
"I can barely hear understand what she's saying," Almanza said.
He told her to call back later from a landline and called an immediate recess to the hearing.
Friday's opening session was almost entirely devoted to a bid by Manning's civilian lawyer, David Coombs, to get Almanza removed as presiding officer.
Coombs had questioned whether Almanza, a U.S. Army reservist on leave from his job as a Justice Department attorney, could serve impartially while the department is simultaneously conducting a probe of WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange.
Almanza rejected demands that he recuse himself, saying he had no connection to the Manning case or the WikiLeaks investigation at the Justice Department.
Coombs filed a writ appealing the ruling but the Army Court of Criminal Appeals rejected his appeal overnight, a U.S. Army legal officer said.
Manning is suspected of downloading 260,000 U.S. diplomatic cables, videos of U.S. air strikes and U.S. military reports from Afghanistan and Iraq while serving as a low-ranking intelligence analyst in Iraq and providing them to Assange, who has denied knowing the source of the material.
The document dump, which has been called one of the most serious intelligence breaches in U.S. history, led to an embarrassing daily drip of revelations for the United States and other governments.
The U.S. government has said that it also put informants and sources at risk.
The pre-trial hearing, which could last up to a week, is being held in an austere courthouse at heavily guarded Fort Meade, headquarters of the top-secret National Security Agency.
Outside the court on Saturday some 200 activists protested the trial, denouncing U.S. authorities for suppressing information Manning allegedly sought to expose.
The ex-computer hacker is being persecuted "for getting the truth out, especially when the truth involves the U.S. violating human rights," said protester Chris Hager, wearing an orange jumpsuit and holding a sign with the message "I am Bradley Manning."
"They want to make such an example of him, so it would be a major warning for others do go in his footsteps," Hager said of the trial and Manning's treatment since his arrest.
Manning's supporters have been holding vigils and rallies outside the gates of Fort Meade and a number of his backers are among the public in the gallery in the courthouse.
At the end of Friday's session, a man shouted out "Bradley, you're a hero."
In instant message chats with Adrian Lamo, the ex-computer hacker who turned him over to the authorities, Manning expressed hope the release of the classified U.S. documents would trigger "worldwide discussion, debates and reforms."
"I want people to see the truth, regardless of who they are, because without information you cannot make informed decisions as a public," Manning said in the chat logs obtained and published byWired.com.
