Washington, .- The exanalista of intelligence of the EE. UU Chelsea Manning has been released, after spending two months in jail for refusing to testify about her revelation of military and diplomatic secrets to WikiLeaks, her lawyers said.
“Today marked the expiration of the grand jury’s mandate and, after 62 days of confinement, Chelsea left the Alexandria Detention Center” (Virginia), his legal team said in a statement released last night.
Manning, who spent seven years in prison for the leaks, can return to jail, since he has been summoned to testify again and has already announced that he will refuse to do so.
“Unfortunately, even before her release, Chelsea received another citation, which means that she is expected to appear before a different grand jury on Thursday, May 16, 2019, barely a week after her release today,” her lawyers explained.
Therefore “it is conceivable that once again be held for contempt of court and returned to the custody of the Alexandria Detention Center” possibly that same day.
“Chelsea will continue to refuse to answer questions, and will use all available legal defenses to prove to the judge (…) that she has justifiable reasons for her refusal to testify.”
Manning opposed interrogation in a grand jury hearing in the Eastern District Court of Virginia last March and was charged with contempt.
Although it is not known exactly what prosecutors want to ask Manning, she and her lawyers have said they will continue to refuse to testify about WikiLeaks or its founder, Julian Assange.
Asange was arrested in London on April 11, after leaving shortly after the current Ecuadorian president, Lenin Moreno, put an end to the diplomatic asylum granted him by that country for almost seven years.
Manining was sentenced to 35 years in prison for the revelations to Wikileaks, but her sentence was commuted in 2017 by the then president, Barack Obama.
While he was a military intelligence analyst, Manning leaked more than 700,000 classified documents in 2010 to the WikiLeaks portal about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and cables of the State Department, which was a setback for US diplomacy. (EFE)
