Press TV
August 25, 2013
US criticized for Manning, Bales penalties
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An American anti-war activist Saturday criticized the US justice system for considering same penalties for two former US soldiers who committed totally different crimes: one “exposed” war crimes and the other “perpetrated” them.
Rick Rozoff was referring to Army Pvt. Bradley Manning, who got 35 years in prison on Wednesday for handing a massive cache of sensitive government files to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, and Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, who was sentenced life in prison on Friday for the killing of 16 Afghan civilians, mostly women and children, last year.
“The fact that the two sentences of the two US servicemen occurred within a week, and that one was sentenced to 35 years for exposing a war crime and an atrocity and the other is given life in prison without a chance of parole for perpetrating one of the worst crimes suggests that the US considers exposing war crimes to be on the same level as perpetrating them,” Rozoff told Press TV.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Amnesty International have slammed the Manning’s punishment. The former soldier is viewed by many in America as a hero who exposed the inner workings of US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Among the 700,000 files leaked by Manning was a video of a 2007 US helicopter attack in Baghdad that reportedly killed a dozen civilians including a Reuters cameraman and his driver.
However, in the Bales case, at least 48 Afghan children were impacted by the incident.
“Forty-eight children directly impacted by Sergeant Bales action – murdered, injured, witness to a murder, or left fatherless by Staff Sergeant Robert Bales,” prosecutor Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Morse said during the court martial.
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