Attorneys for WikiLeaks Bradley Manning Claim Marine Captors Mistreated Him

The psychiatrist who treated WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning at Quantico says that Marine commanders regularly ignored his advice and treated Manning too harshly. 

At Manning’s pre-trial hearing, Captain William Hoctor said he was often frustrated by the way the commanders ignored his medical recommendations. 

Hoctor said that even after 24 years as a senior medical officer he had never experienced such a lack of receptiveness “from his military colleagues, not even when he treated terrorist suspects held at Guantanamo.”

Hoctor claims that from the moment he began treating Manning in July 2010, he recommended that Manning be placed on suicide watch. In late August, Hoctor made the added recommendation that Manning be spared from solitary confinement and be allowed to mix with the general population at the brig. Hoctor claims commanders either ignored his recommendations for a time or, in some cases, rejected them altogether. 

Colonel Robert Oltman, the Marine in charge of the brig which held Manning, says he “did not have the utmost confidence in Captain Hoctor.”

Manning is charged with leaking hundreds of thousands of U.S. government documents to the website WikiLeaks. But Manning’s attorneys are trying to get the charges thrown out by making the argument that Manning has been mistreated by being “subject to unlawful pre-trail punishment” by his captors.