BAGHDAD — An American soldier suspected of leaking a military video of an attack on unarmed men in Iraq was charged with multiple counts of mishandling and leaking classified data and putting national security at risk, the U.S. Army said Tuesday.
Army Spec. Bradley Manning is suspected of leaking a classified video that shows a group of men walking down the street before being repeatedly shot by the Apache helicopters. The gunners can be heard laughing and calling the men “dead bastards.”
If convicted on all charges, Manning could be sentenced to a maximum 52 years in prison.
The video was taken from the cockpit during a 2007 firefight and posted in April on the website . It was an unflattering portrait of the war that raised questions about the military’s rules of engagement and whether more should be done to prevent civilian casualties.
Among the 12 men believed to have been killed were a Reuters news photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and his driver Saeed Chmagh, 40. Two children were wounded.
Hours after the military announcement, Wikileaks sent out a tweet complaining that while Manning was charged, the “trigger-happy Apache crew remain uncharged.”
Manning, 22, from Potomac, Md., was detained in Baghdad in early June and is now being held in Kuwait.
A military version of a grand jury hearing will determine whether Manning should face a trial by court-martial, the Army’s statement said.
No date has been set for the hearing, which will take place in Baghdad, Army spokesman Lt. Col. Eric Bloom told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
An internal military investigation concluded that the troops in the helicopters acted appropriately. According to a last year’s summary of the results of the inquiry, Reuters employees were likely “intermixed among the insurgents” and difficult to distinguish because of their equipment, the document states.
Former computer hacker Adrian Lamo of Sacramento, Calif., said he alerted the military after Manning confided to him online that he had leaked the video in addition to 260,000 classified diplomatic cables.
