A U.S. District Court Judge Anthony Trenga in Alexandria, Virginia, has ordered the release of Chelsea Manning, after being held for refusing to testify in an ongoing U.S investigation on WikiLeaks. The Judge ordered her release because the grand jury hearing the case had concluded.
Chelsea Manning was a former U.S. Army intelligence analyst and WikiLeaks source.
According to the report by Reuters, Alexandria City Sheriff Dana Lawhorne told reporters late on Thursday that Manning had been released from the Alexandria Detention Center.
Trenga rejected a request from Chelsea Manning to cancel fines that he had imposed for her refusal to testify and ordered her to pay fines totalling $256,000.
A detention hearing for Manning scheduled for Friday was cancelled.
“Needless to say we are relieved and ask that you respect her privacy while she gets on her feet,” Manning’s defence team said in an emailed statement.
On Wednesday, a spokesman for Manning’s defence team said Manning had attempted to commit suicide and had been taken to hospital, where she was recovering.
FILE PHOTO: Former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning speaks to reporters outside the U.S. federal courthouse shortly before appearing before a federal judge and being taken into custody as he held her in contempt of court for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, U.S. March 8, 2019.
Spokesman Andy Stepanian said that in spite of her imprisonment and the imposition of financial sanctions, Manning remained “unwavering in her refusal to participate in a secret grand jury process that she sees as highly susceptible to abuse.”
Before her recent incarceration for refusing to testify, Chelsea Manning had served seven years in a military prison for leaking hundreds of thousands of U.S. military messages and cables to WikiLeaks, before being released on the order of President Barack Obama.
WikiLeaks, an internet-based “dead letter drop” for leakers of classified or sensitive information, was founded by Australian citizen Julian Assange in 2006.
Assange is being held in a London prison as British courts consider a request from U.S. prosecutors for his extradition to the United States. He is wanted on charges of conspiring with Manning to hack into a Pentagon computer system containing classified materials.
(Reuters)