US soldier Bradley Manning has been jailed for 35 years for giving a trove of military and diplomatic secrets to the Wikileaks website.
The military judge at Fort Meade, near Baltimore. convicted the 25-year-old last month of 20 offences, including six violations of the Espionage Act. He could have been sentenced to 90 years in prison.
Prosecutors had asked for at least 60 years behind bars. Manning's lawyer suggested no more than 25, because by then, some of the documents Manning leaked will be declassified.
Manning was the source – via Wikileaks – of a series of celebrated stories in The Guardian in 2010 covering the conduct of the war in Iraq, classified US embassy communications and the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
The release of diplomatic cables, war zone logs and videos was the largest leak of documents in US history. It included a video of a 2007 US helicopter attack that killed civilians in Iraq, including a Reuters news photographer and his driver.
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