Wednesday, June 9, 2010

The United States military has arrested an intelligence analyst who may have been responsible for leaking classified combat video and documents to the whistle-blower website Wikileaks.

The man arrested has been identified by Wired magazine as an enlisted soldier, Bradley Manning of the United States Army’s 2nd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division. Manning, a 22-year-old specialist from Potomac, Maryland, is said to have been detained for two weeks on base in Kuwait awaiting trial. The United States military confirmed an arrest and said it “takes the management of classified information very seriously.”

The footage was acquired from an undisclosed source in 2009 by Wikileaks. Wikileaks says the “Collateral murder” footage shows the “murder of Iraqi civilians and two Reuters journalists.”

Reuters had unsuccessfully requested the footage under the Freedom of Information Act in 2007, as two of its news staff, Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen, had died in the attack.

In addition to the video of the Baghdad attack, Manning is suspected of having leaked other classified information, including footage of the Granai attack and a classified Army document evaluating Wikileaks as a security threat, which the site posted in March. Wikileaks is preparing to release a video of the Granai attack in Afghanistan, which killed around 100 civilians.

A summary of the Pentagon investigation into the Granai airstrike, including a video, was due to be released in 2009.