Americans offer to serve term for whistleblower #Bradley Manning Americans rooting in support of convicted leaker, Bradley Manning, have offered to put their life on the line and serve part of his potential 136-year prison sentence and have urged the military judge in charge of the case to consider this option. The online petition titled “I Will Proudly Serve Part of Bradley Manning’s Sentence,” has gathered more than 1,700 signatures out of 2000 needed to submit it to Major General Jeffrey S. Buchanan, who will review the sentence of Mr. Manning once the military judge Colonel Denise Lind makes the ruling. The petitioners said in their request “If we each volunteer to serve part of his sentence… it would bring attention to the amount of time this young man has been sentenced to and, hopefully reduce his sentence to time served.” Mr. Manning is the 25-year-old Army private first class who was convicted Tuesday on 20 counts for sending a huge trove of classified US documents to the anti-secrecy group, Wikileaks. He was acquitted of aiding the enemy, the most serious charge. The sentencing phase of Manning’s trial began on Wednesday and is expected to take up to a month. “Many Americans see what Manning did as a good thing — and they are so strongly committed to it that they’re willing to serve a sentence for him,” Kevin Zeese, an attorney and activist who serves on the steering committee of the Bradley Manning Support Network, was quoted in reports as saying. If such a request were accepted by the US authorities, it would mean that each participant would serve less than a month, if divided into equal parts. One petitioner wrote: “I am age 68 and propose that, strictly as a practical matter, volunteers should serve Bradley’s sentence from oldest to youngest. I’d feel privileged to go first,” according to Russia Today.
Posted on: Sun, 04 Aug 2013 20:03:59 +0000
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