12 Apr 2011

UN: free access to Bradley Manning ‘blocked’

The UN investigator on torture accuses the US government of blocking a one-on-one meeting with detained soldier Bradley Manning who is accused of passing data to WikiLeaks.

Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of leaking data to WikiLeaks.

Juan Mendez, an independent expert who reports to the UN Human Rights council, said he was “deeply disappointed and frustrated” by State and Defense Department officials who made clear they would only allow Mr Mendez to talk to Bradley Manning with a prison official present.

Twenty-three-year-old Private Manning, who is been held at the maximum security Quantico US military base in Virginia, is awaiting trial over 34 charges relating to the leaking of 720,000 diplomatic and military documents to WikiLeaks whilst he was serving as a US army intelligence analyst in Iraq.

Mendez, who is believed to be a former political prisoner who experienced torture in Argentina in the 1970s, said a monitored conversation would violate his job’s requirement for private, confidential and unsupervised interviews with detainees alleging torture and ill-treatment.

Manning’s lawyers claim he is being mistreated by being kept for 23 hours a day in solitary confinement, repeatedly woken up during the night, and that he is not allowed to exercise. They also say he is forced to stand nude in front of other prisoners in the mornings.

Read more: Bradley Manning, life before WikiLeaks

Amnesty International has described the treatment of Private Manning, whose mother is Welsh, as “unnecessarily harsh and punitive” and has called on the British government to intervene.

A Pentagon spokesman said that Manning was being treated like any other maximum security prisoner in the federal prison system, and that only lawyers were allowed one-on-one unmonitored meetings with anyone confined at the Quantico base.

“The UN Special Rapporteur, like any other visitor, is free to request a visit with Manning through Manning’s attorney and Manning is free to agree to it,” Colonel Dave Lapan said in a statement.

Lapan also said there was “considerable misinformation” about Manning’s confinement.

Apart from a brief period about a month ago, Manning had not been forced to sleep naked or awakened repeatedly, Col Lapan added.

The Guardian newspaper said on Monday that more than 250 US legal scholars, including one who taught President Barack Obama constitutional law and served in the administration, had signed a protest over Manning’s “degrading and inhumane” treatment.

Last month, State Department spokesman PJ Crowley resigned after he said US treatment of Bradley Manning was “stupid”.