President Barack Obama on Tuesday shortened the prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, the former US military intelligence analyst who was responsible for a 2010 leak of classified materials to anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, the biggest such breach in US history. Obama, in one of his final acts before leaving office, reduced her sentence to seven years, angering some Republicans. The White House said her sentence would end on May 17 this year. But Obama's decision had nothing to do with the latest WikiLeaks controversy, the White House official said. "Chelsea Manning exposed serious abuses, and as a result her own human rights have been violated by the US government for years," said Margaret Huang, executive director of Amnesty International USA.

Source: dna January 18, 2017 03:26 UTC