On July 30, Bradley Manning was convicted of stealing and disseminating 750,000 pages of classified documents and videos to WikiLeaks, and the counts against him included violations of the Espionage Act. He had been found guilty of 20 of the 22 charges leveled against him. On Wednesday, Manning was sentenced to serve 35 years in prison for leaking the material and breaching classified data. The 1,294 days -nearly three and a half years- he already served in a Maryland military jail will be included as part of the sentence, CNN reported.
Manning's rank will also be reduced from private first class to private, and he will be dishonorably discharged, news reports said.
In a statement during the sentencing hearing, Manning told the court martial that he was sorry for the harm he committed, and that "the last three years have been a learning experience..."
The verdict and sentence will still be reviewed, and possibly reduced by a military district commander, CNN reported. It will be automatically reviewed by the Army Court of Criminal Appeals. Amnesty International and the Bradley Manning Support Network, for their part, have announced an online petition asking President Barack Obama to pardon him.
Manning's lawyers had long contended he was not fit for duty while serving overseas, feeling increasingly isolated. The military brass ignored his condition, even as a military psychiatrist had told the court that he struggled with being a man at the time of leaking the classified information.
Manning told the court he remembered thinking, "I'm going to die, I'm stuck inside the cage." Manning eventually enabled WikiLeaks to publish sensitive messages between U.S. diplomats and military incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan, leading to the biggest breach of classified data in U.S. history.
Army personnel has said that the leaks caused considerable harm to national security.
The Manning case has been compared to that of Edward Snowden, the private contractor who leaked sensitive data about the National Security Agency. Snowden has since recevied political asylum in Russia.
