BY ELIZABETH EMBU
The US soldier convicted of handing a trove of secret government documents to anti-secrecy website Wikileaks has been sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Pte First Class Bradley Manning, 25, was convicted in July of 20 charges against him, including espionage.
In a statement read by his lawyer after the sentencing, Pte Manning said he had acted "out of love for our country".
His supporters have called on President Barack Obama to pardon the soldier or commute his sentence to time served, reports the BBC.
Pte Manning will receive a credit against his sentence of about three and a half years, including time he has already served in jail and 112 days in recompense for the harsh conditions of his initial confinement.
His defence lawyer David Coombs said Pte Manning would first be eligible for parole in about seven years.
Prosecutors had asked for a 60-year sentence in order to send a message to future potential leakers, and Wikileaks called the 35-year sentence a "significant strategic victory".
In addition to the prison sentence, likely to be served at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Judge Col Denise Lind sentenced Pte Manning to be demoted to private and dishonourably discharged from the US Army, and to forfeit his pay.
While stationed in Iraq in 2010, the junior intelligence analyst passed hundreds of thousands of battlefield reports and diplomatic cables to Wikileaks, the pro-transparency group headed by Julian Assange.
Pte Manning has said he leaked the secret files in the hopes of sparking a public debate about US foreign policy and the military.
On Wednesday afternoon, Coombs, flanked by Manning supporters, said he would ask President Obama to pardon Pte Manning.
"The time to end Brad's suffering is now," he said.
Coombs read a statement from Pte Manning that will be included in the request.
"The decisions I made in 2010 were made out of a concern for my country and the world we live in," Pte Manning said, according to Coombs.
DailyTimesNG
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