Washington (AFP) – WikiLeaks leaker Chelsea Manning said Thursday she could return to prison on contempt charges after she refused to testify to a secret grand jury believed to be investigating the anti-secrecy group’s founder Julian Assange.
Manning said she asserted her consitutional rights to refuse to answer questions on Wednesday — even as she was offered immunity — and that a federal judge will review whether her actions amounted to contempt, which could send her back to jail.
“On Friday I will return to federal court in Alexandria, Virginia for a closed contempt hearing,” she said in a statement.
“A judge will consider the legal grounds for my refusal to answer questions in front of a grand jury. The court may find me in contempt, and order me to jail.”
Manning confirmed that the investigation concerned WikiLeaks’ publication of the more than 700,000 classified documents related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that she gave the group for publication in 2010.
The transgender Manning, who was a US Army intelligence analyst known as Bradley Manning at the time, was eventually arrested and sentenced to 35 years in prison for the leak.
President Barack Obama later commuted her sentence, leading to her release in May 2017.
She became a hero to anti-war and anti-secrecy activists and her actions helped make WikiLeaks a force in the global anti-secrecy movement.
The Alexandria court, just outside washington, has not confirmed that WikiLeaks and Assange are targets of the grand jury probe.
But Manning said the questions she was asked on Wednesday “pertained to my disclosures of information to the public in 2010.”
US media has also confirmed the probe is focused on Assange, who has been living in Ecuador’s embassy in London to avoid arrest.
Assange says the United States wants him extradited to stand trial over WikiLeaks’ activities, which he says are no different than what journalists do.
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