US President Barack Obama commutes WikiLeaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning's sentence

Outgoing United States President Barack Obama on Tuesday (January 17) commuted the sentence of former US military analyst Chelsea Manning who committed a breach in 2010 by leaking confidential documents and videos to anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

Chelsea Manning attempts suicide again after being sentenced to solitary confinement

Manning was an intelligence analyst in Baghdad, Iraq, seven years ago when she had supplied to WikiLeaks hundreds of diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts. They also included a 2007 gunsight video of a US Apache helicopter firing at suspected insurgents in Iraq, which killed many people, including two Reuters news staff members.

However, even as Obama commuted Manning's sentence in what constituted one of his final major acts as the president before handing over the job to his successor Donald Trump, a White House official said there was no link between reducing her sentence and the renewed concerns of the American government over the WikiLeaks's action in the 2016 presidential elections. WikiLeaks had released confidential emails of top members of the Democratic National Committee which is said to have hampered the chances of the party's presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to win the election.

The official added that the commutation of Manning's sentence was also not associated with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's recent declaration that he would accept extradition if Manning was freed from prison. She had released more than 700,000 documents, videos, diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts to WikiLeaks and was given a sentence of 35 years for the breach. Her prison sentence will now end on May 17.

Republicans slam Obama

Obama's decision to shorten Manning's prison sentence has, however, angered many Republicans. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan termed the decision "outrageous" and said it set a "dangerous precedent" for national security.

"Chelsea Manning's treachery put American lives at risk and exposed some of our nation's most sensitive secrets," Ryan said.

Republican Senator Tom Cotton said: "We ought not treat a traitor like a martyr." He added that the leak had put American troops, intelligence officers and its diplomats in danger.

Born a man, 29-year-old Chelsea was previously known as Bradley Manning, a US Army official, and said after her conviction that she be identified as a woman and requested for hormone therapy. Since then, she has struggled to cope as a transgender woman in Fort Leavenworth men's military prison, Kansas, and had also tried to kill herself twice last year. 

Manning accepted responsibility for committing the breach, which is one of the factors that led the US president to make the decision, a White House official told reporters.