Thursday, December 16, 2010

Thoughts on Bradley Manning's Detention?

I read Glen Greenwald's post The inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning's detention on Salon the other day. I was surprised how little attention it has gotten when one considers all the press on Wikileaks and Assange. Manning - the purported leaker of classified government documents to Wikileaks - has been in solitary confinement since May. He isn't allowed to exercise in his cell and gets released for one hour each day. Greenwald's post certainly paints a sympathetic picture, and I tend to agree with him. Having read Atul Gwande's piece Hellhole, I've come to see solitary confinement as a pretty inhumane way of punishing someone (and Manning hasn't even been tried... a frightening precedent for whistle-blowers).

1 comment:

james said...

Yeah, it doesn't make any sense to put a compliant, non-violent suspect in a super-max prison. Seems like the military is trying to send a message of deterrence.