News

The UN's top
anti-torture envoy is to investigate the purported US torture of an
American soldier who is accused of leaking top military secrets to
whistleblower website WikiLeaks.

The office of Manfred Nowak, the UN special rapporteur on torture in
Geneva, is to look into a complaint alleging that US army Private
Bradley Manning has been kept under torture conditions for months at a
US military camp in Virginia, US media outlets reported on Thursday.

The UN could ask the United States to stop any violations it finds.

Manning was charged in July with leaking classified government
documents, including footage of a 2007 US Apache helicopter attack in
Baghdad that killed a Reuters news photographer and his driver.

He also faces accusations of leaking other materials, including secret US State Department cables to WikiLeaks.

Supporters say that the US soldier has been subjected to inhumane,
personality-erasing, soul-destroying, insanity-inducing conditions of
isolation for many months.

He faces a military court-martial on charges of providing WikiLeaks
with classified information in violation of the Uniform Code of Military
Justice.

Manning has not commented publicly on the accusations.

In a recent interview with MSNBC television network, WikiLeaks'
founder Julian Assange called Manning a political p... >>>