Lawyers tangle at Manning hearing

THE young soldier accused of leaking national security secrets to WikiLeaks, sat quietly at the opening of his pretrial hearing yesterday, as lawyers tangled over whether the presiding officer could be impartial.

Bradley Manning’s civilian defence lawyer argued the presiding officer, Paul Almanza, an army reserve lieutenant colonel, is biased and should step aside, but Almanza refused. Almanza also denied a move by Manning’s defence to suspend the hearing while seeking to appeal Almanza’s decision to continue on the case.

The hearing is to determine whether Manning will face a court-martial on charges that he aided the enemy by leaking hundreds of thousands of classified military and diplomatic documents.