A US military judge on Tuesday acquitted Army private Bradley Manning of the most serious charge of “aiding the enemy” in the sensational Wikileaks case, but convicted him on multiple counts for the biggest leak of military and diplomatic secrets in American history.
The upshot of the court martial verdict is that Manning, the 25-year-old Army Private First Class, will escape the life sentence, but could still face many years in prison after being convicted of other counts of violations of the Espionage Act. Manning himself had earlier this year pleaded guilty to a number of lesser charges. The charge of aiding the enemy was the most serious of 21 counts brought against Manning for leaking over 700,000 classified military documents and diplomatic cables to Julian Assange’s Wikileaks in 2010 when he was serving the US Army in Iraq as an intelligence analyst.
Had he been held guilty of “aiding the enemy”, Manning would have faced a possible life sentence without parole. But he has been convicted of five espionage counts, five theft charges, a computer fraud charge and other military infractions.