President Barack Obama commuted the majority of WikiLeaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning's prison sentence on Tuesday, with only three days left in office.
Manning was convicted of violating the Espionage Act,
among other charges, in 2013 after she stole secret documents from a
computer system she had access to while working as an intelligence
analyst in Iraq and leaked them to WikiLeaks in 2010.
She
received a 35-year sentence for the leak and has served seven years in
Fort Leavenworth. She will now be freed in five months, on May 17.
Manning, a transgender woman, has attempted suicide twice while in prison.
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, said last week that he'd agree to be extradited to the US if Obama grants clemency to Manning.
The US has threatened to prosecute Assange over the 2010 leak. Assange has been holed up at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012, to avoid extradition to Sweden where he has been accused of sexual assault.
Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, told The New York Times on Tuesday that there's a "pretty stark difference" between Manning's case and that of former government employee Edward Snowden.
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