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July 8th, 2016 
Awake Goy 
Print FriendlyAbove Photo: Chelsea Manning by Alicia Neal large
Lawyers acting for Chelsea Manning, the army soldier who passed US state secrets to WikiLeaks, have expressed fury at military authorities’ handling of the prisoner’s medical status amid a swirl of media speculation.
Manning, who is serving a 35-year sentence for leaking secret diplomatic cables and other official documents, has been cut off from contact with her lawyers and all other outside connections for more than 36 hours, causing alarm among those closest to her. The sudden severing of contact follows a rash of media reports based on unconfirmed rumors about her medical condition.
The army is refusing to give details about what has happened. Persistent inquiries by the Guardian have produced only a statement from the Department of Defense that said the soldier was taken to hospital in the early hours of Tuesday and has now been returned to barracks.
Officials “continue to monitor the inmate’s condition”, the statement said.
Nancy Hollander, lead attorney in the soldier’s recent appeal against her “grossly unfair” 35-year sentence, was livid that unconfirmed information about Manning’s personal medical status had apparently been leaked to the media, while her legal team were being kept entirely in the dark. “We’re shocked and outraged that an official at Leavenworth contacted the press with private confidential medical information about Chelsea Manning yet no one at the army has given a shred of information to her legal team,” she said.
Hollander also complained that a privileged legal call arranged with her client on Tuesday had been cancelled on what appeared to be spurious grounds that the call “could not be connected”.
The army has indicated to Hollander that the earliest she will be able to speak to her client is Friday morning. “We call on the army to immediately connect Chelsea Manning to her lawyers and friends who care deeply about her wellbeing and are profoundly distressed by the complete lack of official communication about Chelsea’s current situation,” the lawyer said.
Manning has been writing as a Guardian columnist since soon after she began serving her sentence. In her most recent article, she provided a deeply felt critique based partly on her own personal experiences of the US military’s new rules allowing transgender people to serve openly in the armed forces.
Manning’s six years in military custody have been marked by periodic disputes with the military authorities. She was subjected to humiliating routines such as being stripped naked at night while in Quantico Marine corps brig in 2010-11, and was threatened last August with indefinite solitary confinement for having an expired tube of toothpaste in her cell.
Source Article from https://www.popularresistance.org/chelsea-manning-cut-off-from-lawyers-amid-hospitalization-rumors/
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