Chelsea Manning formally appeals for presidential pardon

Army private has written to president and army secretary asking for a pardon or reduced sentence over WikiLeaks conviction

Ed Pilkington 

Chelsea Manning, the US soldier convicted of transmitting hundreds of thousands of state secrets to WikiLeaks, has formally appealed to President Obama to have her 35-year sentence commuted.

The army private, 25, formerly known as Bradley Manning, has written to Obama and the secretary of the army, John McHugh, asking to be granted a pardon or for her sentence to be reduced to the more than three years' time served. In a statement, which the soldier already made public following last month's sentencing, Manning said her decision to leak to Julian Assange's anti-secrecy group was "made out of a concern for my country and the world that we live in … It was never my intent to hurt anyone. I only wanted to help people."

In a covering letter to the pardon, Manning's civilian lawyer David Coombs adds a harder note, criticising his client's 35-year sentence as one that "grossly exaggerates the serious of his conduct. The sentence was disproportionate to both the offense and the offender. It will undoubtedly have a chilling effect on future whistleblowers and damage the public's perception of military justice."

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In the pardon request, Manning writes: "I will serve my time knowing that sometimes you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society. I will gladly pay that price if it means we could have a country that is truly conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all women and men are created equal."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/04/chelsea-manning-appeal-obama-pardon