Demonstrators to Call for Release of Soldier in Wikileaks Case

Local Editor

Rallies will be staged in 21 US cities this week calling for the release of Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of leaking military secrets to the public.

Manning allegedly passed on the video known as "collateral murder" that showed American troops shooting civilians from a helicopter in Iraq in July 2007. The dead included two employees of the Reuters news agency.

Though the actions depicted in the video amount to violations of the Geneva Conventions (aka war crimes), none of the soldiers have been prosecuted.

Marjorie Cohn, a professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, argues that if Manning did what he is accused of doing, he should be honored as a hero for exposing war crimes, unlike US government claims that the documents threaten veterans' lives at war.

Manning, who faces 52 years in prison, is also being investigated for allegedly leaking the "Afghan war diary" documents that were posted on Wikileaks and reported by The Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel.