Juan Mendez, the United Nations Rapporteur on Torture, has slammed the United States government for abusing accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower PFC Bradley Manning during pre-trial confinement. Mr. Mendez has repeatedly sought to conduct an unsupervised meeting with PFC Manning in order to investigate these abuses.
“I believe Bradley Manning was subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in the excessive and prolonged isolation he was put in during the eight months he was in Quantico,” said Mr. Mendez
Mr. Mendez commented on Bradley Manning’s conditions of confinement at a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. He went on to say that “the explanation I was given for those eight months was not convincing for me.”
“It’s astonishing that US officials are blocking an investigation into the humiliating and degrading treatment of Bradley Manning, while the Kingdom of Bahrain has just invited Mr. Mendez to conduct a fact-finding mission into their recent abuses of political prisoners,” said Jeff Paterson, a lead organizer with the Bradley Manning Support Network.
A song by legendary singer-songwriter Graham Nash and musician James Raymond (son of David Crosby) -- is being released in support of accused U.S. Army whistleblower Bradley Manning.
Nash and Raymond composed the song "Almost Gone (The Ballad of Bradley Manning)" during this spring's US tour of Crosby-Nash, and the new recording serves as the music bed for the video; it features an impassioned lead vocal by Nash, a two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted (Crosby, Stills & Nash, and The Hollies). "Bradley Manning is a hero to me," he sings, acknowledging Manning's role in making public videos and documents that shed light on such as issues as the true number and cause of civilian casualties in Iraq, human rights abuses by U.S.-funded contractors and foreign militaries, and the role that spying and bribes play in international diplomacy.