President Obama announced on Tuesday that he would commute most of Chelsea Manning's prison sentence, scheduling her release for May 2017. She has already served almost seven years of her 35-year prison sentence, meaning she would have otherwise been freed only in 2045.
Manning, a low-level army intelligence analyst, leaked massive amounts of intel to WikiLeaks in 2010. According to the New York Times, the material she disclosed included records of conversations between diplomatic officials and paperwork that "exposed abuses of detainees by Iraqi military officers working with American forces and showed that civilian deaths in the Iraq war were likely higher than official estimates."
At the time of her trial, she was still known as Bradley Manning. While she admitted her actions and apologized for anyone she may have put at risk, she testified that she'd been in a mental and emotional crisis during the war. After she received her sentence, a record for a leak case, she came out as transgender and changed her name.
"I'm relieved and thankful that the president is doing the right thing and commuting Chelsea Manning's sentence," Chase Strangio, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who has represented Manning, said in a statement released by the ACLU. "Since she was first taken into custody, Chelsea has been subjected to long stretches of solitary confinement — including for attempting suicide—and has been denied access to medically necessary health care. This move could quite literally save Chelsea's life, and we are all better off knowing that Chelsea Manning will walk out of prison a free woman, dedicated to making the world a better place and fighting for justice for so many."
