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Comment by DanHulton | Hacker News Reader

There's a lot of discussion here that is missing the point that is clearly expressed in the first paragraph of the article:

"Pleading for asylum from U.S. officials he says want to persecute him, NSA leaker Edward Snowden told Ecuadorian officials that he fears a life of inhumane treatment -- even death -- if he's returned the United States to answer espionage charges, the country's foreign minister said Monday."

Snowden isn't afraid of being found guilty and serving a reasonable sentence. He's afraid of disappearing into a secret dungeon and tortured for decades. Which is a thing the USA has been proven to do. Recently. To people who have upset the government way, way less than he has.

It's a legit fear.

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Manning was kept for 3 years in prison, half of that in solitary, with sleep deprivation and all that - with no charge. It would almost be against the law, if only Obama hadn't signed the indefinite detention clause within NDAA a couple of years ago (which he promised it won't be abused).

Obviously it's still against human rights and the Constitution, but the US government cares less and less about its own Constitution and even less about international laws lately.

Manning is in the military, UCMJ applies.

Likewise he was held in Quantico Brig from July 2010 to April 2011, which is half again what you claim. His treatment was bad enough that it's not as if you have to lie about it to make your point.

Likewise, he was under formal charges since July 5th, 2010, and has been under the most-recent set of charges since March 1, 2011.

Likewise again, his detention has nothing to do with NDAA. A civilian court could just as easily remand someone to custody for the entire duration of a trial, even if it takes awhile.

All of this is easily available on Wikipedia. Now I'll add some hyperbole: Are there any Manning supporters who don't have to resort to misleading people or to outright lying?

You know, it's entirely possible they were just mistaken.

Chill.

It's 2013 now. Manning was taken into custody in 2010. When do we get to assume people seriously debating the events around Manning's trial will at least be vaguely aware of the big details? Especially since we're discussing Manning in the context of wider U.S. legal policy now.

Garbage in means garbage out, every time. How can you draw accurate parallels from one case to another if you don't even bother to do the barest of research about the case you're drawing from?

Nice information, but you don't have to accuse people of lying. Most likely they're misremembering structurally minor details which don't distract from the main point -- which is that he was held under conditions tantamount to torture, and in an abuse process: in particular, a dubious interpretation of the "Prevention of Injury" status.

If you want to go after liars, go after people who pretend to believe that unnecessary solitary confinement (military or civilian) isn't torture. Or that drone (and vanilla) airstrikes aren't killing civilians in large numbers.

> Are there any Manning supporters who don't have to resort to misleading people or to outright lying?

I like to think of myself as one.

>Manning is in the military, UCMJ applies.

Can you show me what the UCMJ has about detention, and treatment of the detained?

It's all in 10 U.S.C. You can also download the Manual for Courts-Martial which includes all of the UCMJ articles (and IIRC, even the equivalent of 'annotated diffs'). I believe the latest MCM is from 2012.

Are there any Manning supporters who don't have to resort to misleading people or to outright lying?

I think you answered that yourself:

His treatment was bad enough that it's not as if you have to lie about it to make your point.

> He's afraid of disappearing into a secret dungeon and tortured for decades. Which is a thing the USA has been proven to do. Recently. To people who have upset the government way, way less than he has.

Can you provide some examples of when this has happened to a non-military US citizen? I'm not denying it, I'm just genuinely curious here.

He's probably referring to America's program of "Extraordinary Rendition" which disappears people off the streets of cities around the World, and transports them to coöperating countries that are happy to torture prisoners. Supposedly such nations have included Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, and Libya. The number of people so disappeared, their nationality, and their ultimate fate is in unknown. There is no way for the American public to ascertain whether or not such abductions have happened on American soil because the program is secret, lacking any oversight. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition

  | He's afraid of disappearing into a secret dungeon
  | and tortured for decades.

Or spending decades in solitary confinement, which is akin to torture.

    s/akin to//

It is torture. Human beings are not meant to be deprived of interaction that much, and you can be sure he's not in solitary because he's a danger to other inmates.

I consider it to be torture, but a good portion of the population views torture as the stuff where someone's body is meticulously taken apart in the most painful way possible.