FORT MEADE: The US soldier who admitted to leaking a trove of secret documents to WikiLeaks will ask a military judge to dismiss some charges against him in his espionage trial, a legal officer said.
Defence lawyers are scheduled to begin presenting the case for Bradley Manning but first plan to file motions arguing the prosecution has failed to back up four charges, a military officer said. Manning, 25, has admitted to giving WikiLeaks more than 700,000 secret military intelligence files and diplomatic cables in the worst leak of classified information in American history.
But he is contesting 21 charges, including the most serious count that he “aided the enemy” by funneling the files to the anti-secrecy website. The prosecution rested its case last week but suffered an embarrassing setback after acknowledging the military had lost the contract Manning signed laying out the terms of his access to classified information.
AFP
