Julian Assange might face rape charges in Sweden

Bradley Manning, held responsible for the WikiLeaks debacle, is stripped naked and given a suicide-proof smock to wear each nightThis weekend, demonstrators will take to the streets of cities across the world, including London, to protest against America’s treatment of the man it holds responsible for the WikiLeaks debacle — the release of 250,000 confidential U.S. embassy cables last November that revealed devastatingly damaging details of what the diplomats really thought about everybody else.

Inside a tiny cell in the base’s prison block languishes the object of their mission — a slightly-built, fresh-faced young man held in conditions that have been compared to those at the notorious detention camps Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

But he won’t hear them, no matter how loudly they shout. His cell does not have a window and on the rare occasions he is allowed out, the clanking of the chains that shackle his hands and feet tend to drown out other sounds.

We are not, of course, talking about Julian Assange. The white-haired WikiLeaks supremo will be spending his weekend pottering around the 600-acre grounds of his current billet, Ellingham Hall in Suffolk, basking in warm reflections over his speech last Tuesday to 700 wide-eyed students at Cambridge University Union.

He might face rape charges in Sweden but, pursued by plaudits and feted by celebrities such as socialites Jemima Khan and Bianca Jagger, Assange is on something of a high at the moment.

But Bradley Manning — who is being held on remand at Quantico as the Army Private First Class who allegedly leaked the cables and gave Assange his biggest scoop — is most definitely on a low.

A senior U.S. Government official resigned this week after he criticised Manning’s treatment. Now, Britain is facing renewed demands in the House of Commons to intervene on behalf of the prisoner, who has dual UK-U.S. citizenship.

Both countries stand accused of ignoring a shameful abuse of justice that once again raises questions over America’s treatment of unconvicted prisoners.

Americans are divided as to whether 23-year-old Manning is a hero or a traitor for allegedly turning over some 500,000 U.S. Government computer files and documents to WikiLeaks, including footage of forces shooting Afghan and Iraqi civilians.

Unable to get its hands on Assange and silence his whistle-blowing website, is the U.S. taking out all its fury on the one culprit it does have?Held in isolation for more than nine months now, Manning — the blond, blue-eyed son of a Welsh GI bride — complained this week of being ‘left to languish under the unduly harsh conditions of max [security] custody’.

Last week, his lawyer released an 11-page letter that detailed his routine. He starts with a morning inspection in which he has to stand naked outside his cell during roll-call.

Manning is not allowed any personal possessions in his cell, nor can he exercise there. He must answer verbally when his guards check on him every five minutes, so daytime sleep is impossible.

He can leave his cell for just an hour a day, when he is shackled and taken to a recreation room where he must walk around in circles.

He cannot read newspapers or watch television news. His clothes are taken away at night and he sleeps naked but for a hospital gown under a special blanket — which he compares to the lead apron draped over X-ray patients. If he moves his head out of sight while sleeping, the guards will wake him up.

Conditions were even worse in January, when he was briefly placed on a suicide watch. Stripped down to his underwear, he also had his glasses taken away, leaving him to sit in what he described as ‘essential blindness’.

When Manning pointed out — jokingly, he insists — that he could kill himself with the elastic in his boxer shorts, the guards took those away, too.

For three hours at weekends, he is allowed to see a clutch of approved visitors. His mother, Susan Manning, flew over last month from her home in Pembrokeshire in Wales.

Susan has suffered several strokes and has difficulty communicating. In August last year, she was left ‘severely distressed’ after FBI agents suddenly turned up at her home with local police to question her and search her son’s bedroom.

She got another taste of U.S. Government officiousness when her sister and brother-in-law, who had accompanied her from Wales to Quantico, were told they could not seen Manning as they were ‘not on the list’. They had to wait in the prison car park.

David House, an American friend who visits Manning once every few weeks, says the ‘revenge-like conditions’ seem to be having their desired effect on Manning.

He said: ‘I have watched my friend degrade over time — physically, mentally and emotionally.’ A Quantico spokesman has dismissed claims of mistreatment as ‘poppycock’, insisting Manning was designated ‘maximum custody’ as his escape would pose a national security risk.

There are many Americans who will say Manning has got everything he deserves. This is a country of heart-on-sleeve patriotism, with a pride in the military so fierce that an airline pilot need only announce that the uniformed traveller in seat 12E has just come back from Afghanistan for the entire cabin to burst into applause.

It’s also true that Manning was not exactly the principled foe of U.S. misdeeds in Iraq and Afghanistan that his supporters say he is.

He allegedly just hoovered up as much confidential information as he could find and spewed it out to WikiLeaks. The website was hardly any more discerning and — had Assange had his way — would not have censored anything, possibly endangering the lives of U.S. agents and their informants.

So is Manning hero or traitor? The answer is probably neither: he is more the child in the sweetshop; a hacker who found his military clearance gave him easy access to endless amounts of sensitive information.

Despite his growing contempt for U.S. foreign policy — as well as facing the challenge of being gay in a country where the military did not tolerate open homosexuality — he joined the army.

Crucially, in the light of Manning’s alleged crimes, it was Watkins who introduced him to the close-knit world of computer hackers, with their devotion to the idea that all information should be freely available and that authority should be distrusted.

Manning was able to advance both causes in his very first posting, as an intelligence specialist at a U.S. military base 40 miles east of Baghdad.

Incensed, he says, by examples of U.S. mistreatment of Iraqi civilians, he spent his time delving into secret files which he allegedly downloaded on to Lady Gaga CDs before sending them to WikiLeaks.

He was arrested last May after a computer hacker, Adrian Lamo, reported to the FBI that the soldier had admitted during online chats that he was the WikiLeaks source.

How Manning expects to get away with the charges when even his supporters are hailing him as an ‘open society’ hero — effectively saying he did it — remains to be seen. Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich has compared Manning’s treatment to the infamous abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison.

Indeed, the techniques of prolonged isolation, sleep deprivation, enforced nudity and dietary manipulation (he is given anti-depressants) certainly sound familiar to intelligence experts who say it amounts to what the CIA calls ‘no-touch torture’.

His supporters see no possible motives in these other than to break down the prisoner’s spirit and extract a confession that will allow the government to prosecute WikiLeaks and Assange.

The Manning case, say critics, has sinister echoes of the Bush regime’s abuse of Al Qaeda suspects — only worse, as at least they were trying to extract information that could save American lives.

Last weekend, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s spokesman, Philip Crowley, told a seminar in Boston that ‘what is being done to Bradley Manning is ridiculous and counter-productive and stupid on the part of the Department of Defence’. He was immediately forced to resign.

Most threatening of all the charges against Manning will be ‘aiding the enemy’, which carries a possible death sentence. Prosecutors say they will not push for it, but that would ultimately be a military judge’s decision.

A possible death sentence has been seized on by Manning’s supporters in the UK, who argue that it would justify Britain intervening on behalf of someone enjoying such dual citizenship.

Perhaps it’s just as well he doesn’t hear too much about the swollen-headed Assange and the deification of his website But the Foreign Office has been able to defend its refusal to do so by pointing out Manning’s own insistence that he regards himself as American and not British. Why?

Because, whisper supporters, his U.S. lawyer wants to portray him as a patriotic American just trying to do the right thing for his country. This also explains why Manning’s British relatives, though very worried for him, have kept quiet.

But Welsh MP Ann Clwyd has taken up Manning’s case in the Commons. Tony Blair’s former special envoy on human rights in Iraq, she told me she ‘had a lot of sympathy’ with Manning’s motives, while applauding the WikiLeaks revelations as ‘useful to know’.

‘He’s a guy who had no active service experience. Conditions in Iraq were very difficult. The people who should answer for what happened are the military leaders who put him in that position,’ she said.

Manning’s prison visitors say they studiously avoid discussing anything to do with WikiLeaks because there are always three Marines standing in earshot and he has never admitted being its source.

Every week seems to bring a new pompous, self-glorifying pronouncement from the 39-year-old Australian. He has taken credit for the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, and told the Cambridge Union that ‘history will judge him’. His planned autobiography, he says modestly, will ‘become one of the unifying documents of our generation’.

It doesn’t seem to occur to Assange that every criticism he throws at the U.S. hardly helps matters for Manning. Meanwhile, a Manning camp insider said there was anger that WikiLeaks did not honour a pledge to donate to his legal fund until January, and then gave the paltry sum of £9,000.

Assange explained to his Cambridge audience that ‘we cannot voice our support for Mr Manning loudly’. This may be true, but it is also convenient for someone who prefers not to share the limelight.

Daniel Domscheit-Berg, Assange’s former WikiLeaks collaborator, has complained in a new book that Assange never paid his way and always took more than his fair share of everything, even their precious supplies of Spam.

Some would say Assange hasn’t changed. It is his sources — not only Manning, but also Rudolf Elmer, a Swiss ex-banker who is in prison after giving Assange files on tax evaders — who take the real risks.

In January, when Assange turned up late to meet his bail conditions at Beccles police station in Suffolk, he was wearing only socks on his feet. It was a typical affectation.

Sadly, Bradley Manning does not enjoy the same luxury as he rots away in a cold cell nearly 4,000 miles away, without socks, shoes or clothes.