US soldier Bradley Manning has been jailed for 35 years for giving hundreds of thousands of military and diplomatic secrets to the WikiLeaks website.
In a brief hearing, the military judge did not offer any explanation for the sentence.
The closely watched case has seen the 25-year-old called both a whistleblower and a traitor. Amnesty International and the Bradley Manning Support Network have announced an online petition asking president Barack Obama to pardon Manning
Prosecutors wanted at least a 60-year prison sentence, saying it would dissuade other soldiers from following in Manning’s footsteps. The defence suggested a prison term of no more than 25 years so that Manning could rebuild his life.
Military prisoners can earn up to 120 days a year off their sentence for good behaviour and job performance, but they must serve at least one-third of any prison sentence before they can become eligible for parole.
Manning will get credit for about 3 1/2 years of pretrial confinement, including 112 days for being illegally punished by harsh conditions at a Marine Corps brig. His lawyers asserted he was locked up alone for at least 23 hours a day, forced to sleep naked for several nights and required to stand naked at attention one morning.
Manning leaked more than 700,000 Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield reports and State Department diplomatic messages in 2010 while working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq.
He was convicted last month of 20 offences, including six Espionage Act violations, five theft counts and computer fraud. Prosecutors were unable to prove that he aided the enemy, a crime punishable by life in prison.
Manning has apologised and said he wanted to provoke a debate on the country’s military and diplomatic actions. “I believed I was going to help people, not hurt people,” he said last week.
His defence team said he was under severe mental pressure as a young man struggling with gender identity issues at a time when openly gay people were not allowed to serve in the military.
Prosecutors said the leaks endangered the lives of US intelligence sources and prompted several ambassadors to be recalled, reassigned or expelled.
Prosecutors requested a far longer prison term than other soldiers have received in recent decades for sharing government secrets.
Albert T. Sombolay got a 34-year-sentence in 1991 for giving a Jordanian intelligence agent information on the build-up for the first Iraq war, plus other documents and samples of chemical protection equipment. Clayton Lonetree, the only Marine ever convicted of espionage, was given a 30-year sentence, later reduced to 15 years, for giving the Soviet KGB the identities of CIA agents and the floor plans of the embassies in Moscow and Vienna in the early 1980s.