- Joined
- Apr 13, 2011
- Messages
- 34,951
- Reaction score
- 16,311
- Gender
- Undisclosed
- Political Leaning
- Socialist
An American soldier accused of the biggest leak of classified information in US history was young and naive, but thought he could make the world a better place, according to his lawyer.
Private Bradley Manning, 25, had "good intentions", David Coombs said as the soldier faced his first day on trial in which prosecutors said his actions aided the enemy.
Manning is charged with providing more than 700,000 documents to WikiLeaks, an anti-secrecy website, including a video showing an Apache helicopter kill a group of civilians and two Reuters journalists in Iraq.
Manning, a former intelligence analyst, has admitted to giving troves of information to WikiLeaks, but military prosecutors want to prove Manning aided the enemy, which carries a potential life sentence.
They said they will present evidence that former al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden asked for and received information WikiLeaks published.
"This is a case of about what happens when arrogance meets access to sensitive information,'' Capt. Joe Morrow said in his opening statement.
"This, your honor, this is a case about a soldier who systematically harvested hundreds of thousands of documents from classified databases and then dumped that information on to the Internet into the hands of the enemy,'' Morrow said.
Read more @: US soldier goes on trial over security leaks - Americas - Al Jazeera English
So prosecutors wanna prove that Bin-Laden asked for information from Wikileaks? So by the logic wouldnt any source that Bin-Laden goes to for intelligence and information can be seen as "aiding the enemy"? I still can wrap my head around of someone telling the truth and showing how governments work.