Chelsea Manning case: Judge orders release from prison

[muriel_volestrangler]

Source: BBC

A US judge has ordered the immediate release of former army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning from prison.

Manning had been remanded for refusing to testify in an inquiry into Wikileaks and had been in detention in Virginia since last May.

She was scheduled to appear in court on Friday, but the judge ruled that it was no longer necessary for her to testify.
...
She accrued more than $250,000 (£198,000) in fines for refusing to co-operate with the inquiry. Her legal team had asked for these to be vacated, but the judge said they must be paid in full.

Read more: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-51865165

[jberryhill]

1. This was on motion by the other inmates

There was a risk they’d have to let everyone go free on 8th Amendment grounds.

[RKP5637]

2. Excellent, but the $250,000 fine should be dropped. Look at

all the asses that refused to appear when subpoenaed for the investigations. They just said F off, and nothing really happened to them. We often live in a bullshit system.

[FM123]

3. They didn't need her to testify, they should have released her before she attempted suicide.

(NPR) A top United Nations official is accusing U.S. authorities of imposing a penalty that amounts to torture against former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who is currently jailed in a federal facility after refusing to testify to a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Nils Melzer, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture, said in a letter that he made public this week that detaining Manning and fining her with the aim of coercing her to testify constitutes a kind of torture that runs afoul of U.S. international human rights obligations.

Calling Manning's treatment a "deprivation of liberty," Melzer wrote that jailing and fining Manning fulfills "all the constitutive elements of torture, or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In my view, such measures do not fall under the 'lawful sanctions' exception" of the U.N.'s Convention Against Torture.

https://www.npr.org/2019/12/31/792681443/jailing-and-fining-chelsea-manning-constitutes-torture-top-u-n-official-says

[Jake Stern]

4. There needs to be a limit to how long someone may be held for contempt

Understand why it exists but it should not be open ended. There has to come a point at which it becomes apparent that the person simply will not talk.

I'm thinking 6 months to 1 year MAX.

[moniss]

5. Keyhole Kenny Starr and the judge

kept Susan McDougal in prison for 18 months for contempt when she refused to give testimony to him in a grand jury proceeding about Whitewater. Along with the judge he put her in solitary confinement for 6 months of that time. Starr and his guys also destroyed the reputations and careers of very peripheral people to the Whitewater matters. They would first go around Arkansas making all kinds of accusations against them and then offer them an "opportunity" to plead guilty and cooperate even though they had no actual evidence of any wrongdoing. Sarah Hawkins was one such person. If you were a strong enough person to fight them then they would either go away after threatening you and ruining you in the eyes of your community or they would coerce others to make false claims against you and then try to pressure you that way. Starr's investigators tried to dig up dirt on single mothers regarding their conduct and their children's circumstances in order to pressure the mothers with the threat of interfering with the custody of their children.