The lawyers for the United States Army intelligence analyst who has been accused of leaking secrets to the website WikiLeaks have asked the military judge presiding over the case to dismiss the charges. A pretrial hearing began on Tuesday of this week for Bradley Manning and this is where oral arguments were given on the dismissal motion. The pretrial hearing took place at Fort Meade in Maryland. It is expected that the hearing will last three days. Manning has been charged with 22 counts, one of which is aiding the enemy.
Manning’s defense team claims that the prosecutors working on the case have not met their obligations to share information that could aid the defense in the case. The defense said that because of this, the case should be dismissed. The defense team will also file a challenge to the aiding the enemy charge because he did not plan to give intelligence specifically to the enemies of the country, according to defense attorney David Coombs. Coombs also wrote in a motion that Manning “expressly disclaimed any intent to help any enemy of the United States” in online chat logs.
It was alleged that Manning leaked a treasure chest of military documents and diplomatic cables in relation to Iraq and Afghanistan to the website. If Manning is convicted, he could be facing life in prison for his crimes. At a preliminary hearing in December, prosecutors on the case testified that they discovered evidence that Manning downloaded diplomatic cables onto discs that were submitted to the website. The defense team describe Manning as a troubled person who should have never had access to classified documents while in Iraq from November of 2009 to May of 2010. The defense team also claims that the security of the computers was lackadaisical by the military. The website began publishing the documents back in July of 2010, which caused many political figures across the globe to be maddened by U.S. views of those leaders’ public and private lives.