A Judge Has Ordered Chelsea Manning Back to Jail

On May 16, a judge ordered former soldier and Wikileaks informant Chelsea Manning back to jail for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury.

Manning was originally held in contempt of court for 62 days after refusing to testify before a grand jury regarding the classified documents she provided Wikileaks in 2010. She was released on May 9 after the first grand jury’s term expired but immediately hit with another subpoena. Manning announced in a press conference that she had no plans to testify.

U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga ruled that in addition to being jailed, Manning will be fined $500 a day if she refuses to comply with the subpoena after 30 days, and $1000 a day after 60 days.

In 2013, Manning was sentenced to 32 years in prison for leaking classified materials, but President Barack Obama commuted that sentence in 2017. Manning’s attorneys argue that the recent imprisonment is part of a continued attempt to punish Manning:

“In 2010, Chelsea took a principled decision to let the world see the true nature of modern asymmetric warfare,” Moira Meltzer-Cohen, an attorney for Manning, said Thursday. “It is telling that the U.S. has always been concerned with the disclosure of those documents than their damning substance.”

According to ABC news, “while the nature of the grand jury’s probe remains unknown, it convenes at the same federal court where prosecutors recently filed charges against WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.”