U.N. decries treatment of Army prisoner

UNITED NATIONS, March 12 (UPI) -- A United Nations investigator has accused the United States military of holding alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning in conditions approaching torture.

"I conclude that his 11 months in prison under conditions of solitary confinement constitutes at a minimum cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment," Juan Mendez, U.N. Human Rights Council special investigator on torture, told the Monday edition of the British newspaper The Guardian. Mendez has been investigating Manning's treatment since his May 2010 arrest on 22 counts of aiding the enemy in an alleged leak of state secrets.

Manning, a U.S. Army private first class and an intelligence analyst, was arrested at a military base near Baghdad, then transferred to Camp Arifjan in Kuwait for three months of solitary confinement. He later spent eight months at the Quantico Marine base in Virginia, again in conditions of solitary confinement. In April 2011 Manning was sent to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, and currently is being held in a Virginia facility, awaiting court martial.

Mendez told the newspaper he could not definitely identify the Army's treatment of Manning as torture because he was not permitted to interview the prisoner under acceptable conditions of privacy.