The leak is considered the largest ever of secret U.S. government files. He faces a maximum sentence of up to 136 years. His sentencing hearing is set to begin on Wednesday. In addition to multiple espionage counts, he was also found guilty of five theft charges, two computer fraud charges and multiple military infractions.
The documents also included 470,000 Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield reports and 250,000 secure state department cables between Washington and embassies around the world. Manning, an intelligence analyst, was arrested in Iraq in May 2010. He spent weeks in a cell at Camp Arifjan, a U.S. Army installation in Kuwait, before being transferred to the U.S.
During the court martial, prosecutors said Manning systematically harvested hundreds of thousands of classified documents in order to gain notoriety. With his training as an intelligence analyst, Manning should have known the leaked documents would become available to al-Qaida operatives, they argued.
The defense characterized him as a naive and young soldier who had become disillusioned during his time in Iraq. His actions, Coombs argued, were those of a whistle-blower. In a lengthy statement during a pre-trial hearing in February, Manning said he had leaked the files in order to spark a public debate about U.S. foreign policy and the military.
Much of the court martial was spent considering the soldier‘s intentions as he leaked the documents.
아주경제 앤드류 이 기자=
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com