WikiLeaks’ Manning feared death

‘I remember thinking I’m going to die,’ says Bradley Manning. AP photo

WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Mannin spoke publicly for the first time, saying he feared dying in custody after his arrest in Iraq for allegedly sending classified information to the secret-spilling website.

“I remember thinking I’m going to die. I’m stuck inside this cage,” a sometimes nervous Bradley Manning told a pretrial hearing Nov. 29, describing the nearly two months in 2010 he spent in a cell at an Army installation in Kuwait before he was moved to the U.S. “I just thought I was going to die in that cage. And that’s how I saw it, an animal cage,” the Associated Press quoted him as saying.

Pretrial confinement ‘needlessly harsh’

His lawyers are seeking dismissal of all charges, saying his pretrial confinement there was needlessly harsh. Bradley was arrested in May 2010 in Iraq on suspicion of having passed classified material to WikiLeaks website.

He was charged with a number of offenses, including communicating national defense information to an unauthorized source and aiding the enemy, a capital offense, though prosecutors said they would not seek the death penalty. Manning’s lawyers were working on a plea deal.