Chelsea Manning Taken Into Custody for Refusing to Testify About Wikileaks in Sealed Court

Former army intelligence veteran Chelsea Manning was taken into custody for contempt of court Friday morning, after refusing to testify about Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in front of a secret federal grand jury. The sealed hearing was held in the United States District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia, the same district in which a sealed indictment of Assange was revealed.

Before entering the court, Manning, an anti-secrecy activist, told reporters she would be happy to share what she knows to the public.

“I don’t believe in the grand jury process, I don’t believe in the secrecy of this,” she said. “I have no problem explaining what happened. I’ve done it before. Why we should go this in a secret closed hearing with only the prosecutor, no lawyer, and a grand jury that is barely able to act independently?”

Manning will be held in custody “until she purges or the end of the life of the grand jury,” which could last as long as 18 months and be followed by a criminal charge, according to journalist Ford Fischer. This was not unexpected, as she had earlier told reporters she accepted the possibility of going back to jail.

She told the judge on the sealed case, Judge Claude Hilton, that she would “accept whatever you bring upon me” in consequence. Asked whether it would be possible for Manning to be held in home confinement so that she can tend to her medical needs, the judge said no. U.S. marshals would take care of that.

Manning, a transgender woman, was arrested in 2013 and sentenced to 35 years in prison for violating the Espionage Act by leaking classified information that was publicized by Wikileaks. She was later pardoned by former President Barack Obama. In a statement posted to Twitter Friday afternoon, Manning said she will refuse to comply with the grand jury system and will “stand by [her] previous public testimony” from 9 years ago, in which said she had already testified for a full day on the exact same case.

“I will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been historically used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech,” she stated.