Chelsea Manning, who is currently in a prison at Fort Leavenworth for leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, tried to take her own life last week, her lawyers confirmed on Monday. The news came after the 28-year-old Manning was hospitalized last week, but the reasons were not disclosed.
“[Chelsea] knows that people have questions about how she is doing and she wants everyone to know that she remains under close observation by the prison and expects to remain on this status for the next several weeks,” Manning’s lawyers said in a statement Monday. “For us, hearing Chelsea’s voice after learning that she had attempted to take her life last week was incredibly emotional.”
The statement went on to say that the lawyers had unexpectedly lost touch with Manning last week and criticized the military prison for allowing her medical information to leak. “Though [Chelsea] would have preferred to keep her private medical information private, and instead focus on her recovery, the government’s gross breach of confidentiality in disclosing her personal health information to the media has created the very real concern that they may continue their unauthorized release of information about her publicly without warning,” the statement read.
Manning has served six years of her 35-year prison sentence; she filed an appeal against her sentence in May.
