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Quick Read - Making Sense Of Bradley Manning-Wikileaks Case

AP, CNN, REUTERS, NEW YORK TIMES (U.S.), THE GUARDIAN (UK)

Worldcrunch

FORT MEADE- Wikileaks whistleblower, Bradley Manning pleaded guilty on Thursday to 10 of the 22 charges he is accused of in what the U.S. government calls the largest leak of classified documents in the nation’s history, writes CNN.

There are many moving parts to this story. Here are the five things you need to know about the pre-trial hearings.

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U.S. Army

WHY? Private first class Manning is in military court in Maryland and has refuted the most serious charge on him: aiding the enemy. The AP reports that Manning believed the information wouldn't harm the U.S. and he decided to release it because he was upset by way the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were being conducted.

“I felt I accomplished something that would allow me to have a clear conscience,” he said Thursday during nearly an hour of testimony. Manning said that too often American troops disregarded the lives of the ordinary people there. “In attempting counterinsurgency operations, we became obsessed with capturing and killing human targets on lists.”

WIKILEAKS AS LAST RESORT Wikileaks wasn’t the first place that Manning turned to while on leave in January 2010. According to CNN, Manning said that he first called The Washington Post and wasn’t taken seriously. He then called The New York Times and got no response, so he finally decided to send the documents to the Wikileaks organization. His intention was to spark a public debate about foreign policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, writes the New York Times.

BRUTAL REALITY The reports that were released added up to a history of the “day-to-day reality” in both war zones that he believed showed the flaws in the counterinsurgency policy the United States was then pursuing according to the New York Times. In February 2010, after he returned to Iraq, Private Manning sent more files to WikiLeaks, including a video of a 2007 incident in Iraq in which American forces killed a group of men, including two Reuters journalists, and then fired again on a van that pulled up to help the victims.

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Elekhh

OPENING UP? His trial has been called a “theatre of the absurd” by Michael Ratner, attorney for Wikileaks and Julian Assange in the U.S., as quoted in The Guardian. The media and public have been denied all access to evidence, court documents, court orders and discussions that will eventually seal Manning’s fate. Thursday was the first time that Manning offered his own version of events.

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Snapperjack

INCARCERATIONReuters says that Manning has been held at Quantico Marine Base in Virginia for more than 1,000 days now. On Tuesday, a military judge reduced any sentence that he is finally given by 112 days because of the harsh treatment he received during his detention. Manning said he was stripped to his underwear every night and forced to sit "in essential blindness", without his prescription eyeglasses. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years for the 10 charges he pled guilty to on Thursday. If he is convicted of aiding the enemy he faces life imprisonment.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War

That Man In Mariupol: Is Putin Using A Body Double To Avoid Public Appearances?

Putin really is meeting with Xi in Moscow — we know that. But there are credible experts saying that the person who showed up in Mariupol the day before was someone else — the latest report that the Russian president uses a doppelganger for meetings and appearances.

screen grab of Putin in a dark down jacket

During the visit to Mariupol, the Presidential office only released screen grabs of a video

Russian President Press Office/TASS via ZUMA
Anna Akage

Have no doubt, the Vladimir Putin we’re seeing alongside Xi Jinping this week is the real Vladimir Putin. But it’s a question that is being asked after a range of credible experts have accused the Russian president of sending a body double for a high-profile visit this past weekend in the occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

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Reports and conspiracy theories have circulated in the past about the Russian leader using a stand-in because of health or security issues. But the reaction to the Kremlin leader's trip to Mariupol is the first time that multiple credible sources — including those who’ve spent time with him in the past — have cast doubt on the identity of the man who showed up in the southeastern Ukrainian city that Russia took over last spring after a months-long siege.

Russian opposition politician Gennady Gudkov is among those who confidently claim that a Putin look-alike, or rather one of his look-alikes, was in the Ukrainian city.

"Now that there is a war going on, I don't rule out the possibility that someone strongly resembling or disguised as Putin is playing his role," Gudkov said.

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