Lawyers for Chelsea Manning say the imprisoned transgender U.S. soldier attempted suicide for the second time last month.
Manning was in solitary confinement when she tried to kill herself. She had been placed there after her first suicide attempt in July.
“After her July suicide attempt, I watched her begin to piece her life and spirit back together only to have that shattered by the disciplinary proceedings brought against her and then the unannounced initiation of her term of punishment last month,” said Chase Strangio, one of Manning’s lawyers. “She has repeatedly been punished for trying to survive and now is being repeatedly punished for trying to die.”
Manning was previously known as Bradley. She was sentenced to 35 years in prison in a case involving a huge security breech.
A U.S. military judge sentenced the former Army intelligence analyst to the lengthy prison term after earlier convicting her of passing more than 700,000 classified documents to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.
The documents included U.S. State Department diplomatic cables and battlefield reports from Iraq and Afghanistan.
During her 12-week trial, her defense lawyers said she leaked the documents in part because of the gender identity crisis she was experiencing a time when the U.S. military expelled personnel who openly identified as gay. The policy has since been changed.
Manning staged a hunger strike for several days in September until the Army agreed to provide surgery to treat her gender dysphoria.
