Chelsea Manning
President Barack Obama has commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, the U.S. military servicemember who was convicted of leaking information to Wikileaks and sentenced to 35 years in Leavenworth, according to the New York Times.
She will be released in May 2017.
Manning is transgender, and began her transition while in prison.
Manning deployed to Iraq in 2009 and worked as a security analyst. While there, she copied hundreds of thousands of military incident logs that documented abuse of detainees by the Iraqi military and suggested Iraqi civilian deaths were much higher than had been reported.
At her trial, Manning confessed and apologized, although she hadn’t accepted a plea deal.
Most previous leak cases resulted in one- to three-year sentences. Manning received 35 years and will be released after serving seven. Over the past year, she attempted suicide twice. Although she asked for a pardon, which would wipe out the sentence, a commutation releases her for time served.