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Amnesty: UK should help ‘British’ Bradley Manning
Britain helped Guantanamo Bay suspects: they should do the same for WikiLeaks whistleblower, adds lawyer
Amnesty International has called on the British government to help Bradley Manning, the US Army private who is accused of passing secret documents to whistleblower website WikiLeaks, because he is a UK citizen.
In an email sent to Associated Press, the human rights group says that the British government "should be demanding that the conditions of his detention are in line with international standards".
Manning, 23, is thought to be the source of several celebrated tranches of WikiLeaks releases, including video footage of a US helicopter gunning down innocent Iraqis and the US embassy cables. He was betrayed to the FBI last year by noted hacker Adrian Lamo, to whom he confessed in an online chat.
Manning, who has not been charged with any offence, is being held in solitary confinement at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Virginia. Amnesty describes his treatment as "inhumane", and claims that he is confined for 23 hours a day, is shackled at the hands and legs during all visits and denied opportunities to work, which would allow him to leave his cell.
According to the Guardian, Manning was born in Oklahoma in 1987. When his American father left his British mother in 2001, he moved with her to Wales, where he lived for a few years. His supporters have seized on the fact that, according to the 1981 British Nationality Act, anybody born after 1983 to a UK citizen living overseas counts as British.
Amnesty's UK director, Kate Allen said: "Manning's Welsh parentage means the UK government should demand his 'maximum custody' status does not impair his ability to defend himself, and we would also like to see Foreign Office officials visiting him just as they would any other British person detained overseas and potentially facing trial on very serious charges."
Clive Stafford Smith, a lawyer and director of prisoners' rights group Reprieve, sees a precedent for Manning's case in the way the UK government handled the detention of terrorism suspects by the US at Guantanamo Bay: "The government took a principled stance on Guantanamo cases even for British residents, let alone citizens, so you would expect it to take the same stance with Manning."
The British embassy in Washington DC says it has not been asked to provide assistance to Manning. ·
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With Blair calling Mubarak a'good man' can you possibly imagine this current spineless PM be so audacious as to challenge the Great American Empire? It would mean getting off his bicycle and standing up straight. British PMs no longer do that, unless told to by their US Master!
Manning may well be British. It won't save him:
see http://knowledgeempire.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/dual-citizenship-for-man...
The Home Secretary has the power to deprive citizenship. And as the link above indicates the Master Nationality International law notes that a dual citizen incarcerated in Country A can be treated as a 'sole' citizen, and (here's the kicker) specifically includes Military Service obligations as a condition for denying dual citizenship rights.
To be honest I'm more than a little frustrated with Amnesty. As a member I have generally found its stances laudatory, but a number of cases in recent years seem to involve Amnesty pursuing perceived American injustices via British courts. If Amnesty are convinced there is a case for torture they should present the details in an American Court and jurisdiction. Using the UK courts/rights as a keyhole into these cases stinks of legalistic circumvention bordering on Public Relations ****stirring. Just because someone happened to stop off in Heathrow for 5 mins before heading off elsewhere does not mean that Amnestry should leverage UK courts/process. Try using local process first... it does exist in the US.
Better idea: Let the Yanks sort this themselves. Britain only ever gets the scrag end with America.