27 May, 2017
Whistleblower Chelsea Manning walks free from prison on Wednesday, after serving almost 7 years of a 35-year sentence.
The 29-year-old had her jail sentence commuted in a final act of clemency by former U.S. president Barack Obama before he left office in January.
Chelsea Manning, a private first class soldier in the US Army who leaked more than 700,000 military intelligence reports and documents to WikiLeaks in 2010, was released from military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, on Wednesday.
Manning - known then as Bradley Manning - was sentenced to 35 years in prison on 20 counts, including violations of the Espionage Act.
Supporters of Manning - who attempted suicide twice past year alone - said they feared she would not have been able to survive the long sentence.
"We are able to confirm that Chelsea Manning has been released safely from military prison", Hollander and Ward said. The exact details about her release have been kept secret in order to protect her privacy.
Amnesty International, which had campaigned for Manning's release, was quick to applaud her freedom but said the fight was not over. "The traumas of the past few years will not simply evaporate when she walks out of the prison".
"For the first time in her life, Chelsea will have the opportunity to live freely as her authentic self, to grow her hair, engage with her friends, and build her own networks of love and support", Strangio wrote.
"Chelsea Manning is the LGBTQ movement's greatest-ever anti-war activist and whistleblower about government crimes, and yet she was shunned by virtually every large LGBTQ non-profit", Thayer said.
To facilitate her return to civilian life, a program called "Hugs for Chelsea" has raised more than $100,000 so that she can find housing and private health insurance. An Army spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Jennifer Johnson, said Manning will be on "excess leave" while her court-martial conviction is under appellate review.
Where Manning is immediately headed hasn't been revealed but she said back in January she planned to move back to Maryland after her release.
October 2016: Manning's attorneys announced that she attempted suicide for the second time in recent months at Kansas' Fort Leavenworth. She also thanked Obama for the commutation; her sentence was much longer than those usually give to leakers. In the days before his inauguration, Trump tweeted that Manning was a "Ungrateful TRAITOR" who "should never have been released from prison".
