Bradley Manning gets 35 years in prison for leaking army documents

Bradley Manning, the 25-year-old former US intelligence analyst who has admitted to having leaked over 700,000 secret government documents to WikiLeaks, has been sentenced to spend 35 years in prison.

Manning was facing a maximum sentence of 90 years for the 20 offenses he was found guilty of, and the prosecution asked for a minimum of 60 years in prison in order to deter other potential leakers in the Army.

But Army Col. Denise Lind, the judge at the trial, decided that 35 years was the right amount, and the sentence will be reduced by about 3.5 years because he already spent 1,293 days in confinement and was harshly treated at the beginning of his detention.

According to Wired, Manning has also been demoted from private first class to private, will have to forfeit all pay, and has been dishonorably discharged from the US Army. He will not have to pay the $100,000 fine he was facing.

If all stays as it is now, Manning will be eligible for parole after serving a third of his sentence. But it is possible and likely that this sentence is not final, as both the verdict and the sentence are first set to be reviewed by the commander of the military district of Washington, and then by the Army Court of Criminal Appeals.

After that an appeal can also be made to the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces and ultimately even to the US Supreme Court.