Wikileaks hires lawyers for Manning, Pentagon turns them away

This is Amurr'ca, boy. You are free...to be denied legal representation.

The Daily Beast -

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange hired lawyers to represent the Army intel analyst accused of leaking State Dept. secrets. But the Pentagon sent them away. Philip Shenon reports on WikiLeaks concerns about Bradley Manning's treatment in custody—and the video of a U.S. massacre in Afghanistan, coming as soon as next week.

The secretive whisteblowing website WikiLeaks said Friday night that its founder, Julian Assange, had hired private criminal defense lawyers to represent the 22-year-old Army intelligence specialist accused of providing WikiLeaks with highly classified combat videos from Iraq and Afghanistan.

But Birgitta Jonsdottir, a parliamentarian in Iceland who acts as a spokeswoman for the website, said in a telephone interview from Reykjavik that the Pentagon had refused this week to allow the lawyers to meet the Army intel analyst, Bradley Manning.

“I haven’t seen it myself,” Jonsdottir said of the new video. But she said she understood it was “horrible” because “there are so many children being massacred.”

Jonsdottir said Assange had hired private lawyers several days ago because of growing alarm that the accused whistleblower is being mistreated by the Defense Department.

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