UK to press US over treatment of WikiLeaks suspect
DAVID STRINGER, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 05, 2011 9:00 a.m.
Last modified: April 05, 2011 9:02 a.m.
LONDON - British diplomats will press the United States anew over concerns about the military's treatment of a U.S. Army private suspected of supplying thousands of sensitive files to WikiLeaks.
The Foreign Office said Tuesday it first contacted the U.S. last month about the conditions under which 23-year-old Bradley Manning was being held at a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Virginia, but officials would make a new approach after Manning's plight was discussed by British lawmakers.
Manning is being held in military detention in solitary confinement for all but an hour every day, and is stripped naked each night and given a suicide-proof smock to wear to bed. His lawyer has complained that Manning's treatment is degrading and punitive, a charge the U.S. military has denied.
"All people who are detained in custody deserve to be treated in detention according to the highest international standards, and we certainly expect nothing else, nothing less, from the United States," British Foreign Office minister Henry Bellingham told lawmakers.
"(Those conditions serve) no purpose other than to humiliate and degrade Bradley Manning. I regard it as cruel and unnecessary," opposition Labour Party legislator Ann Clwyd said in a House of Commons debate late Monday.
Last month, the chief State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley quit after he described the treatment of Manning as "ridiculous" and "stupid."
The Foreign Office said Tuesday it first contacted the U.S. last month about the conditions under which 23-year-old Bradley Manning was being held at a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Virginia, but officials would make a new approach after Manning's plight was discussed by British lawmakers.
Manning is being held in military detention in solitary confinement for all but an hour every day, and is stripped naked each night and given a suicide-proof smock to wear to bed. His lawyer has complained that Manning's treatment is degrading and punitive, a charge the U.S. military has denied.
"All people who are detained in custody deserve to be treated in detention according to the highest international standards, and we certainly expect nothing else, nothing less, from the United States," British Foreign Office minister Henry Bellingham told lawmakers.
"(Those conditions serve) no purpose other than to humiliate and degrade Bradley Manning. I regard it as cruel and unnecessary," opposition Labour Party legislator Ann Clwyd said in a House of Commons debate late Monday.
Last month, the chief State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley quit after he described the treatment of Manning as "ridiculous" and "stupid."
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