Nobody held accountable for crimes Manning revealed, except himself

Bradley Manning could not know that he would be the only person served with injustice. According to Icelandic MP Birgitta Jonsdottir talking to RT, he’ll never get a fair trial because President Obama said he was guilty before his trial.

RT:One time your party nominated Private Manning for the Nobel Peace Prize. Now, on paper at least, he is a convicted criminal. How do you feel about that?

Birgitta Jonsdotir: I feel quite upset and I am actually appalled by the fact that they are going to slam on him 136 years in prison for putting out in the public domain information that truly belonged there.  Also let’s not forget that nobody has been held accountable for the war crimes that the whole world was able to see depicted in the video, collateral murder. No one has been held accountable for that except the whistleblower and that’s absolutely outrageous.

RT:So a pessimist would say to all this: ‘what is the point of doing all this if no one was held accountable’?

BJ: Obviously there is still hope that someone will be held accountable and obviously Bradley Manning could not know that he would be the only person served with injustice. I find it very strange that even if you can actually see soldiers shooting and killing a wounded person nobody has been questioned so may be its time to figure how the US legal system works so somebody could be held accountable for that.

RT:The Devil’s advocate would say: ‘how would you feel if someone devolves  some secret Icelandic government information that was highly sensitive, may be put people’s lives at risk?’ What would be your answer to that?

BJ: Nobody has been put into damage and there has been no proof of blood on anybody’s hands except the US military and their NATO allies. Iceland is a NATO ally, and if, indeed, my government was participating in something of this nature I would very much like to know. You cannot have a either a lawmaker nor the general public taking informed decisions if you don’t have any information to make a decision. I also want to stress, and this is very important in relation to Bradley Manning, Bradley Manning will never get a fair trial because President Obama said before the trial started that he was guilty and that he was even guiltier than Daniel Ellsberg. He was not aware of the classification level of the documents that Bradley Manning released. There are four million people in the United States that have access to the documents Bradley Manning put out into the public domain.

RT:You mentioned that no lives had been put at risk, but thinking back those Afghan war logs released by Bradley Manning in 2010 did reveal identities of some informants. Surely they were put at risk. That was reckless.

BJ: That’s why Wikileaks at the time, who acted as the middleman that received the brown envelope, went into collaboration with The Guardian, Der Spiegel and The New York Times, so they could release it in such a way that nobody would be in harm’s way . If you listen to his statement, his intention was never to put anyone in harm’s way, and he is certainly not a traitor. It is interesting that whistleblowers are usually people who have tremendous faith in the system and when they recognize that the system is not serving the people , that’s when they feel a strong need to reveal the wrongdoing that’s being done to the general public . He is actually a very patriotic person towards his nation and the same order applies to Snowden.

RT:Snowden is in hiding, Manning is convicted. What is the future for whistleblowers?

BJ: It’s bleak but despite the fact that Bradley Manning was supposed to be used with this trial to scare other whistleblowers from  doing what is considered in many countries to be a heroic act, to inform the general public , Snowden still did it. There is a cooling effect. I am worried and I am very pleased that the MEPs have sent this letter to Obama. I definitely support it and I think Bradley Manning has served his time.