Chelsea Manning’s lawyers confirm soldier's hospitalisation due to suicide attempt
Manning’s lawyers called the army’s disclosure of the hospitalisation to media a ‘gross breach of confidentiality’
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Your support makes all the difference.The lawyers for Chelsea Manning, the transgender military whistle-blower serving a 35 year sentence for sending classified information to Wikileaks, have confirmed she was hospitalised last week following a suicide attempt.
Manning, 28, who is serving her sentence at the US Military Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, was taken to hospital on 5 July.
Her lawyers were “shocked and outraged” at the time of the hospitalisation, due to US media outlets having been informed of an incident that involved information about her personal health. Her legal team were told they could not speak to Manning for a number of days at the time.
The lawyers spoke to Manning for the first time since her hospitalisation on Monday and accused the US Army of a “gross breach of confidentiality” for publically revealing the soldier had been hospitalised.
In an email to media, lawyers Chase Strangio, Vincent Ward and Nancy Hollander said in a joint statement: "Last week, Chelsea made a decision to end her life.
"Her attempt to take her own life was unsuccessful.”
They added that Manning “knows that people have questions about how she is doing” and will remain under close observation at the lockup for several weeks.
“She would have preferred to keep her private medical information private, and instead focus on her recovery.
“The government’s gross breach of confidentiality in disclosing her personal health information to the media has created the very real concern that they may continue their unauthorised release of information about her publically without warning,” the statement read.
Manning, who was born male but identifies as a woman, was arrested as Bradley Manning. She has since been granted hormone therapy by the US Army to transition while serving her sentence.
Manning is a former intelligence analyst in Iraq, who in 2013 was convicted by a military court of providing more than 700,000 documents, videos, diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts to WikiLeaks. It was the biggest breach of classified materials in U.S. history.
The US army has been contacted for comment.
Additional reporting by agencies
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