Glenn Greenwald does some reporting about the conditions that Army Private Bradley Manning, who is suspected of leaking files to WikiLeaks, is being held under at the brig in Quantico, Virginia, for the last five months:
From the beginning of his detention, Manning has been held in intensive solitary confinement. For 23 out of 24 hours every day -- for seven straight months and counting -- he sits completely alone in his cell. Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he's barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions. For reasons that appear completely punitive, he's being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed (he is not and never has been on suicide watch). For the one hour per day when he is freed from this isolation, he is barred from accessing any news or current events programs. Lt. Villiard protested that the conditions are not "like jail movies where someone gets thrown into the hole," but confirmed that he is in solitary confinement, isolated entirely alone in his cell except for the one hour per day he is taken out.
In sum, Manning has been subjected for many months without pause to inhumane, personality-erasing, soul-destroying, insanity-inducing conditions of isolation similar to those perfected at America's Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado: all without so much as having been convicted of anything. And as is true of many prisoners subjected to warped treatment of this sort, the brig's medical personnel now administer regular doses of anti-depressants to Manning to prevent his brain from snapping from the effects of this isolation.
The conditions of Manning's confinement, implemented without regard to whether or not he's ultimately guilty of the crime he's accused of, reminds me somewhat of the manner of extreme isolation in which Jose Padilla was held without trial for three and a half years in a military brig in South Carolina. Padilla was ultimately convicted on terrorism-related charges once he was brought out of military detention, and his treatment was surely harsher. But unlike Padilla, Manning isn't actually suspected of committing any violent crimes, so it's unclear to me why he's facing this kind of treatment, except that the government is treating his guilt as a foregone conclusion.
Politicians have been accusing WikiLeaks of being a "terrorist" organization, and apparently the government is treating Manning like one. Or at least, how we used to treat them back in the Bush years, before the Obama administration restored the rule of law. Look forward, not backward, etc.
