Chelsea Manning Reportedly Hospitalized Following Suicide Attempt

Former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning was hospitalized on Wednesday, per her legal team. She had reportedly attempted to commit suicide. The 32-year-old is currently recovering in the hospital from the incident.

Manning is currently scheduled to appear before a judge on Friday about a motion to terminate civil contempt sanctions. She refused to testify before a grand jury and has remained in jail for almost a year.

“Her actions today evidence the strength of her convictions, as well as the profound harm she continues to suffer as a result of her ‘civil’ confinement – a coercive practice that the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, recently said violates international law,” Manning’s legal team said in a statement Wednesday.

The legal team also said that Manning “remains unwavering in her refusal to participate in a secret grand jury process that she sees as highly susceptible to abuse.”

According to PEOPLE, the former soldier refused to answer any questions about her ties to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. He is currently under investigation for publishing thousands of classified and sensitive military documents in 2010.

Manning was briefly released from prison last year after spending 62 days in jail. However, a judge ordered her to be confined until she either testified or the WikiLeaks investigation came to an end.

Manning leaked roughly 750,000 military documents to WikiLeaks during her time in the U.S. Army. She was ultimately court-martialed in 2013 and convicted of violations of the Espionage Act. She served seven years of her 35-year sentence in a military prison before her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama.

Manning was fined $500 for every day she is in custody after 30 days. The total increases to $1,000 every day she is in custody after 60 days. Her legal team says that she has accumulated “nearly half a million dollars in threatened fine” during her time in jail.

The former Army soldier wrote a letter to judge Anthony Trenga in 2019 that said she objected to testifying in front of a grand jury. She sees it as an effort to “frighten journalists and publishers.”

“I have had these values since I was a child, and I’ve had years of confinement to reflect on them,” Manning said in her letter. “For much of that time, I depended for survival on my values, my decisions, and my conscience. I will not abandon them now.”

(Photo Credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)