The U.S. Army soldier accused of leaking secret documents to the WikiLeaks website was transferred Wednesday to a Kansas military jail.
Pfc. Bradley Manning arrived at the Army's prison at Fort Leavenworth after spending the past nine months at a Marine brig in Quantico, Va. His transfer came amid claims from his lawyer and others that his confinement at Quantico amounted to torture.
At Quantico, Manning was confined in solitary to a prison cell 23 hours per day, with one hour to shower and for exercise. He was in chains and leg irons whenever he left his cell. He was sometimes stripped naked at night and forced to stand at attention in the nude for morning inspection.
Marine officials claimed the steps were taken to prevent Manning from injuring himself. His lawyer has said the treatment was unduly harsh and amounted to punishment before trial.
Manning is being held while authorities investigate charges involving reams of sensitive diplomatic and military documents he is accused of leaking while posted as an intelligence analyst in Iraq.
"Given the length of time he's been in pretrial confinement at Quantico (and) the likely period of pretrial confinement in the future ... we reached the judgment this would be the right facility for him," Jeh Johnson, the Pentagon's general counsel, said about the move in a Tuesday briefing.
"At the request of Private Manning's defense counsel, an assessment is under way to determine whether Private Manning is mentally competent in this case in the event it goes to trial," Johnson added.
Manning's lawyers have complained the 23-year-old soldier was mistreated at the Virginia Marine brig where he had been held since May.
Manning's defense attorney, David E. Coombs, said the timing of the move was not a surprise.
"The defense was in the process of filing a writ of habeas corpus seeking a court ruling that the Quantico Brig violated PFC Manning’s constitutional right to due process," .
"While the defense hopes that the move to Fort Leavenworth will result in the improvement of PFC Manning’s conditions of confinement, it nonetheless intends to pursue redress at the appropriate time for the flagrant violations of his constitutional rights by the Quantico confinement facility," he wrote.
Last month, President Barack Obama said he had been assured by the Pentagon that Manning's treatment was appropriate.
Lt. Col. Dawn Hilton, who is in charge of the medium-security detention facility at Leavenworth, said Manning will undergo a comprehensive evaluation there to assess whether he is a risk to his own or others' safety. The 150 inmates at the facility — including eight who are awaiting trial — are allowed three hours of recreation a day, she said, and three meals a day in a dining area.
She said the facility, which opened for pre-trial detainees in January, is designed for long-term detention. Officials say Manning's case, which involves hundreds of thousands of highly sensitive and classified documents, is complex and could drag on for months, if not years.
Manning faces nearly two dozen charges, including aiding the enemy, a crime that can bring the death penalty or life in prison.
His transfer to Leavenworth comes a bit more than a week after a U.N. torture investigator complained that he was denied a request to make an unmonitored visit to Manning. Pentagon officials said he could meet with Manning, but it is customary to give only the detainee's lawyer confidential visits.
The U.N. official, Juan Mendez, said a monitored conversation would be counter to the practice of his U.N. mandate.
A few days later, a committee of Germany's parliament protested about Manning's treatment to the White House. And Amnesty International has said Manning's treatment may violate his human rights.
Tom Parker, a policy director at Amnesty International, said, "The conditions that he was reported to be held in at Quantico were extremely harsh and could have damaged his mental health."
President Barack Obama and senior military officials have repeatedly contended that Manning is being held under appropriate conditions given the seriousness of the charges against him.
He is accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, including Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, confidential State Department cables and a classified military video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack in Iraq that killed a Reuters news photographer and his driver.