By NBC's Ellie Hall
Patrick Semansky / AP
Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, right, is escorted to a courthouse in Fort Meade, Md., Thursday.
Three State Department officials were called as defense witnesses Thursday for Pfc. Bradley Manning as a pre-trial motions hearing continued in the WikiLeaks case, the largest leak ever of U.S. government documents.
Manning's defense team planned to cross-examine the witnesses about a State Department assessment of the May 2010 leaks and how the leaked documents affected U.S. interests abroad.
The testimony will conclude the defense's evidence for its motion to compel discovery, a mandatory pre-trial information exchange of evidence. It is unlikely that the judge, Col. Denise Lind, will rule on this motion Thursday and the court will continue on to a defense petition asking the court to drop 10 of the 22 charges against the 24 year-old analyst.
Manning, a 24-year-old Crescent, Okla., native, faces the possibility of life in prison if convicted of the most serious charge: aiding the enemy. He allegedly sent to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic cables and war logs downloaded from government computers while working as an intelligence analyst in Baghdad in late 2009 and early 2010.
The pretrial hearing began Wednesday and is expected to conclude Friday.
Earlier:?Military court tells US to give records to WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning
More content from msnbc.com and NBC News:
Follow US News on msnbc.com on Twitter and Facebook
?
fenway park coachella philadelphia flyers 4/20 student loan forgiveness ufc 145 weigh ins record store day 2012
No comments:
Post a Comment