Britain under pressure to take up Manning case

Amnesty International asks government to intervene on behalf of soldier suspected of having passed US secrets to WikiLeaks

The British government is under pressure to take up the case of Bradley Manning, the soldier being held in a maximum security military prison in Virginia on suspicion of having passed a massive trove of US state secrets to WikiLeaks, on the grounds that he is a UK citizen.

Amnesty International tonight called on the government to intervene on Manning's behalf and demand that the conditions of his detention, which the organisation has called "harsh and punitive", are in line with international standards. Amnesty's UK director, Kate Allen, said: "His Welsh parentage means the UK government should demand that his 'maximum custody' status does not impair his ability to defend himself, and we would also like to see Foreign Office officials visiting him just as they would any other British person detained overseas and potentially facing trial on very serious charges."

Clive Stafford Smith, director of Reprieve, which provides legal assistance to those facing capital punishment and secret imprisonment, likened the conditions under which Manning is being held to Guantnamo Bay. "The government took a principled stance on Guantnamo cases even for British residents, let alone citizens, so you would expect it to take the same stance with Manning."

Manning is a UK citizen by descent from his Welsh mother, Susan. Government databases on births, deaths and marriages show that she was born Susan Fox in Haverfordwest in 1953. She married a then US serviceman, Brian Manning, stationed at a military base near the city and they had a daughter, Casey, in the same year. Bradley was born in Oklahoma in 1987.

Bradley was born in the US and is thus a US citizen. But under the British Nationality Act of 1981 anyone born outside the UK after 1 January 1983 who has a mother who is a UK citizen by birth is themself British by descent.

"Nationality is like an elas! tic band : it stretches to one generation born outside the UK to a British parent. And that makes Bradley Manning British," said Alison Harvey, head of the Immigration Law Practitioners' Association in London.

So far, however, Manning's British status has not impinged itself upon the UK authorities. The British embassy in Washington said it had not received any requests to visit Manning in jail. "It hasn't crossed our path yet," an official said.

The issue of the soldier's nationality has been bubbling furiously on Twitter in recent days and has been taken up by the UK branch of the Bradley Manning supporters network.

Manning has been held in the brig of Quantico marine base in Virginia since last July, having been arrested in Iraq where he was stationed as a US army intelligence analyst two months previously. He is alleged to have been the source of several WikiLeaks exposs of US state secrets, including the massive trove of embassy cables released in November.

He has been charged with illegally obtaining 150,000 secret US government cables and handing more than 50 of them to an unauthorised person. Yet campaigners say the conditions in which he is being held are wholly disproportionate.

He was recently put on suicide watch for two days, in which he was stripped to his underpants, against the advice of prison psychiatrists. He remains on a regulation that keeps him alone in his cell 23 hours a day and requires him to be checked every five minutes, and he is shackled hand and foot when he has visitors.

In December the UN launched an investigation into his treatment to see if it amounted to torture.

The Foreign Office said it was unable to release any information on an individual's nationality without that person's consent. In general terms, the government normally will not intervene in cases of ! dual nat ionality where the person is held in the other country, but there are exceptions on humanitarian grounds, including claims of inhumane treatment.


guardian.co.uk Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

UK greenhouse gas emissions fall 8.7%

Image
Total UK emissions plummet as recession lowers electricity and fuel use A dramatic fall in greenhouse gas emissions following the recession has brought the UK's climate change targets for the next five years within easy reach, taking the pressure off government and business to comply. Government estimates released on Tuesday showed greenhouse gas emissions fell by 8.7% from 2008 to 2009, the biggest drop since records began in 1990. Carbon dioxide levels plunged 9.8%, a fall only matched in 1980, in records extending to 1970. The unexpectedly deep slump in emissions mirrors the fall in industrial output in the recession, with high-emitting sectors including construction and transport hit particularly hard. But it also means that government-set climate change targets of cutting emissions by 35% by 2020, compared with 1990 levels, now look much easier to meet. The UK has already met the targets for 2016, provided emissions stay at 2009 levels. This raises the prospect that business...
Keep reading

Top flyer boo-boo : Shut off noisy engines

LONDON: It's too noisy, could you please turn off the engines ? Could you please open the window? These are some of the "foolish" and "bizarre requests" flyers often make to flight attendants, according to a new survey. The survey of some 3,000 Virgin Atlantic cabin crew members found that some passengers fail to understand why they are prevented from opening the window, others think "turning down" the engines could reduce the noise. "Please, can you open the window?" was among the most common unusual queries made by uncomfortable passengers who seem to be unaware of the benefits of a pressurised cabin at 35,000ft. Other unique questions included "could you turn the engines down because they are too noisy?" and "please can the captain stop the turbulence?", the Telegraph reported. The survey also laid bare the level of comfort and service some customers expect, with several asking flight attendants "can you sho...
Keep reading

Dogs can be trained to sniff out bowel cancer, Japanese researchers say

Image
Experiments show that labrador retriever's sense of smell can identify minute traces of chemicals circulating in human body Dogs can be trained to sniff out bowel cancer, even when the disease is in its early stages, researchers in Japan claim. In a series of experiments that involved sniffing the breath or stool samples of patients, a specially-trained labrador retriever proved nearly as good at identifying those with cancer as a conventional colonoscopy examination. The team, led by Hideto Sonoda at Fukuoka dental college hospital, said some dogs have such a keen sense of smell that they can detect minute traces of chemicals that appear to circulate in the bodies of people who have cancer. The finding builds on previous experiments in which researchers used dogs to sniff out cancers in the skin, lungs, bladder and ovaries. Writing in the journal Gut , the researchers describe how the eight-year-old dog was trained to distinguish between the smell of a patient with colorectal canc...
Keep reading