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Updated 5.15pm
CHELSEA MANNING has been released from prison in the US.
The US Army confirmed this afternoon that she had left Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.
After seven years behind bars, Chelsea Manning will walk out of the security gates of the prison and finally able to complete her transition as a transgender woman.
When she first arrived at the military barracks Manning was a male soldier, then known as Bradley, who stunned the world by releasing a huge trove of more than 700,000 classified military and diplomatic documents via WikiLeaks.
But she will have to return to active duty once released, because her court-martial conviction is still under appeal.
She will not get paid but will be entitled to some benefits, according to Army spokesman Dave Foster.
Speaking to ArmyTimes earlier this week, he said:
Pvt Manning is statutorily entitled to medical care while on excess leave in an active duty status, pending final appellate review.
In an active duty status, although in an unpaid status, Manning is eligible for direct care at medical treatment facilities, commissary privileges, morale welfare and recreation privileges, and exchange privileges.
Manning’s release follows a last-minute commutation of her sentence by president Barack Obama in the waning days of his administration.
Without Obama’s parting gift, Manning would have remained behind bars until 2045, after a 35-year sentence.
Suicide attempts
Manning, now 29, made two suicide attempts last year alone, along with a hunger strike to denounce the disciplinary measures to which she was subjected.
But the devastating cycle of depression, desperate measures and stays in solitary confinement is now over for Manning, who now turns a new page.
“For the first time, I can see a future for myself as Chelsea. I can imagine surviving and living as the person who I am and can finally be in the outside world,” she wrote last week.
“Freedom used to be something that I dreamed of but never allowed myself to fully imagine.
Now, freedom is something that I will again experience with friends and loved ones after nearly seven years of bars and cement, of periods of solitary confinement, and of my health care and autonomy restricted, including routinely forced haircuts.
Manning’s mother has also released a statement in the last week saying she cannot wait for her daughter to enjoy freedom as a transgender woman.
She wrote:
“I am so proud of Chelsea and delighted she will finally be free again.
“It is going to be very hard for her to re-adjust after so long inside the prison’s four walls and I’m happy she will be staying in Maryland where she has family to look out for her.
Chelsea is so intelligent and talented, I hope she now has the chance to go to college to complete her studies, and to do and be whatever she wants.
My message to Chelsea? Two words: ‘Go, girl!”
With reporting by © – AFP 2017
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Mickeyleaks
@Minom Pnom: You complete fool.
@Minom Pnom: it never ceases to amaze me the number of men who are *obsessed* with other’s people’s penises!
@Deirdre O’Byrne: not as obsessed as you are Deirdre!
@Deirdre O’Byrne: How is he obsessed?
Oh come on. I’m gay and as left wing as they come but even I thought that was funny. If we start getting offended by every little thing we do a disservice to the actual bad and homophobic things that are happening in the world. Let’s not lose our sense of humor and the ability to take a joke.
@Ger: Well said Her ! Sorry Ger Autocorrect!!
I don’t see the relevance of her sexuality in this case .
She leaked highly confidential documents putting the lives of her colleagues at risk, is that not the story here?
She also exposed war crimes committed with impunity. Is that not the story here?
@Patrick J. O’Rourke: I agree , but I don’t understand what her sexuality has to do with anything .
Is it to be used as a thinly vailed excuse?
@Shane Murphy: don’t worry, fox is going after her for being entitled to benefits
@Patrick J. O’Rourke: Bradley Manning leaked confidential information.
@Hurt Stoogie: War crimes are not confidential information. They are crimes and it is the duty of all citizens to bring them to public notice, whether or not one is in the employment of the state. Anything else is failure to report a crime, conspiracy and complicity. It’s exactly your attitude that people should just shut up and let terrible things happen for the sake of an easier life that had left this country in the corrupt state it had languished in for the last century
@Shane Murphy: funnily enough, her sexual it has zero to do with her gender identification, let alone anything else in this article.
@Shane Murphy: ah it’s relevant to the journal though. They love this stuff!
@Sinead Nemanja Walsh: f
The right to personal autonomy and to be who you want to be is the most essential intellectual right that anyone can have. To be heterosexual, homosexual, trans-sexual or any paradigm in between is the right of everyone. Nature has contrived many variations on gender and sexuality. The human mind may be able to envision more. As long as one’s decision to exercise this fundamental right does not illegitimately interfere or restrict that same right for another, then that right is limited only by one’s ability to envisage a manifestation of sexuality / gender and for that to become feasible. Who knows where evolution may lead us? It may yet be that we are only restricted by what we imagine to be possible or to be impossible. Chelsea Manning is a person to be admired. Not alone to have the courage to expose wrongdoing and to be willing to accept the consequences, but to run the additional risk of coming out as transgender with its attendant risks, requires courage of the highest order. She deserves recognition for her manifestation of a new paradigm of courage and bravery. I, for one, salute her!
@Tomasz Irlandczik Krótki: Well said. Brought a tear to my eye.
Wait for it. The self appointed transgender experts will be out again in force thinking that they have the right to tell Chelsea who she is.
Did obama not put him there in the first place?
@Shawn O’Ceallaghan: wasn’t it a military courts martial that convicted her? Wasn’t aware the US President could incarcerate someone off his own volition.
Thank you for your service Pvt. Manning
Stunning and brave…… Whoops wrong tranny
@darrell fahy: go home you transphobic troll
@darrell fahy: lame joke you moronic fool. God forbid someone lives how they want. Grow up ya dope!
Jog on trev
Am home dear
What’s transphobic about what I said largest??
@darrell fahy: I think you may need to look up the terminology used in the transsexual and transgender community. You’ll understand then.
@Brian Ó Dálaigh: I pretty much doubt that Darrell will understand, his two braincells are communicating via falg signals, he lacks the mental capacity to understand
Easy now Larry,understanding and supporting a lifestyle are to different things.carry on playing a victim,no point changing a life’s work
@darrell fahy: If you think being transgender is a lifestyle choice, then why don’t you try it, for maybe a year, or so, you fool
Caution, the journal will remove and censor comments if you refer to HIM as HIM and not as HER.
@eastsmer #IRExit: That’s a shame. People will have to resort to overhand tactics such as discussing what Manning was incarcerated for, and whether or not early a commution of sentence was appropriate, rather than irrelevancies such as gender identity
P.S. Your comment has not been removed.
Great news
Do we all have to pretend he is a she?
Traitor
@Blue Moon rising: Troll
I heard he she loves games https://youtu.be/mnBqjNA29xY
Suppose it takes her mind off everything else
Wither poor Bowe Bergdahl had he come out as gay, or better yet like Chelsea Manning as transgendered Obama might have pardoned him also.
Hey, That picture of Bradley manning, in Germany… That’s a fake picture, #photoshoped….
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