Chelsea Manning will continue to receive health care and other benefits given to active duty soldiers after she is released from prison on Wednesday, it was reported on Monday.
The transgender army soldier, who was jailed for one of the largest leaks of classified documents in US history, will remain eligible for the benefits so long as her court-martial remains under appeal, USA Today reported on Monday.
She is scheduled for release from a military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, at some point on Wednesday after seven years behind bars.
After her release, Manning will technically be considered an active duty soldier, though she will not be paid a salary.
Manning will continue to have access to commissaries – or special grocery stores tailored to servicemen and women and their families – and military exchanges, which are retail stores operated on military bases.
‘Pvt. Manning is statutorily entitled to medical care while on excess leave in an active duty status, pending final appellate review,’ a US Army spokesperson told USA Today.
The army declined to provide specifics as to other benefits that Manning will receive while she is released.
Manning said last week she can’t wait to breathe the spring air and go swimming.
In an interview with The Guardian from her prison cell at Fort Leavenworth, Manning said: ‘I’m looking forward to breathing the warm spring air again.
‘I want that indescribable feeling of connection with people and nature again, without razor wire or a visitation booth. I want to be able to hug my family and friends again. And swimming – I want to go swimming.’
Manning is expected to live in Maryland when she finally walks free – the same state where she sent WikiLeaks the classified military and diplomatic documents that landed her in prison.
The 29-year-old had served seven years of a 35-year stretch when Barack Obama commuted her sentence right before he left the White House.
Manning, who still identified as a male named Bradley when she was arrested, has been serving her sentence in an all-male jail.
She twice attempted suicide in jail where she was often kept in solitary confinement and went on a hunger strike last year in an attempt to get officials to allow her to undergo gender reassignment surgery.
‘For the first time, I can see a future for myself as Chelsea. I can imagine surviving and living as the person who I am and can finally be in the outside world,’ Manning said earlier this week.
‘I am forever grateful to the people who kept me alive, President Obama, my legal team, and countless supporters.
‘Freedom used to be something that I dreamed of but never allowed myself to fully imagine.
‘Now, freedom is something that I will again experience with friends and loved ones after nearly seven years of bars and cement, of periods of solitary confinement, and of my health care and autonomy restricted, including through routinely forced haircuts.’
Originally named Bradley, Manning became a hero to anti-war activists and a villain to government officials outraged over her leaking of classified files.
Three days before leaving office in January, then-president Obama slashed Manning’s sentence by 28 years after more than 115,000 people signed a petition calling for her release.
Chase Strangio, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union which lobbied on Manning’s behalf, said that ‘like far too many people in prison, particularly transgender women, Chelsea Manning has had to survive unthinkable violence throughout the seven years of her incarceration.’
Manning was an army intelligence analyst based in Baghdad in 2010 when she leaked the huge trove of files, which included footage of an Apache helicopter strike that killed two Iraqi journalists working for the British news agency Reuters.
The massive leak caused an international furor, exposing the private opinions of senior US diplomats and other top officials about Washington’s allies and foes.
Manning was arrested after confessing her part in the leak to an online acquaintance, who alerted military authorities.
Her case sparked fresh controversy last year when she was put into an isolation cell as punishment for a suicide attempt.
She said she attempted to kill herself a second time while in solitary confinement.
‘The transition out of these horrific institutions will not be easy, and part of what we hope is that Chelsea will find the space, love, and support to heal and build a life of her choosing,’ the ACLU’s Strangio said in a statement.
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