Saturday Feb. 23, 2013, marked Bradley Manning's 1,000th day without a trial. A rally in support of Manning was held at the Denver capitol at 1 p.m., which coincided with the Day of Resistance pro-gun rights rally. Police presence was minimal as vehicles honked in support of the demonstrators standing on Lincoln St. near the Denver capitol.
Manning was arrested in 2010 for allegedly releasing classified military documents to Wikileaks. The most widely discussed video released was the Collateral Murder video, which depicts the 2007 murder of over a dozen people in Baghdad by a U.S. military helicopter. Among the murdered were civilians and two Reuter's employees. D. B. Grady from The Atlantic wrote, "Manning has been charged with everything from bringing discredit upon the armed forces to 'aiding the enemy.' Much of his first year of confinement was spent in humiliating suicide watch and Prevention of Injury conditions."
"Bradley Manning is a particularly ugly case. He's been detained without charges for about nine months, he was basically being tortured - that's what it means to be in solitary confinement with pretty ugly treatment. That's the kind of thing we complain about bitterly when it happens in Iran or China and so on. It's happening right here - no charges. He isn't being brought to a civilian court... he's being severely punished, in fact tortured, for claims that even if they were established should be a reason for respect not criminal charges." - Noam Chomsky
Manning is also accused of releasing the Iraq War Logs, Alyssa Rohricht of Counterpunch wrote:
"The files revealed thousands of reports of prisoner torture and abuse filed against coalition forces in Iraq, including reports of people being hung from the ceiling on hooks, whipped with cables, sexually assaulted, urinated on, and having holes bored into their legs with electric drills. The logs also added an additional 15,000 civilian deaths to the known body count, totalling over 150,000 deaths, of which roughly 80% were civilian.
"Furthermore, the leaks detailed allegations of child abuse and child trafficking by the U.S. defense contracting company in Afghanistan, DynCorp, a company which is estimated to make about $2 billion per year in revenue from the U.S."
Along with Denver, over 70 other rallies, marches, and concerts were held around the world in support of Bradley Manning.
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