| Updated: 3/15/2012 10:42 am |
Published: 3/15/2012 10:41 am
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FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) - Military prosecutors say a U.S. Army private aided al-Qaida by leaking hundreds of thousands of military and other government documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.
Pfc. Bradley Manning had been charged with aiding the enemy among a total of 22 counts, but on Thursday the military publicly identified the enemy Manning's actions aided. Manning and his attorneys are appearing at a hearing in a military courtroom at Fort Meade, near Baltimore, for two days of hearings in the case.
Military prosecutors say Manning, a 24-year-old Oklahoma native, downloaded and transferred to WikiLeaks nearly half a million sensitive battlefield reports. Defense lawyers say that Manning was a troubled soldier who shouldn't have had access to classified material and that the leaked material did little or no harm to national security.
(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
