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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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CT Law Prof Weighs In on Treatment of Alleged Wiki-leaker

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Wednesday, April 13, 2011   

NEW HAVEN, Conn. - A Connecticut law professor has released a letter of concern about the treatment of Army Pvt. Bradley Manning, the accused whistleblower in the "WikiLeaks" case who has been imprisoned for 10 months at the Marine base at Quantico, Va.

The letter has been signed so far by 300 academics, mostly other law professors.

Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman says he's concerned about the treatment being reported by Manning's attorney: solitary confinement 23 hours a day and no contact with other prisoners. Manning has been stripped of his clothes and given a smock to sleep in at night, supposedly as a suicide-prevention measure. Some experts say this level of isolation and humiliation amounts to torture, and Ackerman says he's glad so many have signed onto his letter.

"That's the point, to express our concern and to insist that this cannot be allowed to continue."

A United Nations rapporteur on torture has not yet been allowed to visit Manning, and on Tuesday he criticized the Obama administration for its failure to provide access to him.

Ackerman says the U.S. government's criminal case against Manning doesn't justify his treatment in prison.

"Either these conditions have to be radically revised or we have to have a clear statement of what the facts are and why the Marine Corps in Quantico thinks that this is justified."

The letter, published in The New York Review of Books, concludes that without proof to the contrary, "this pattern of degrading treatment aims either to deter future whistleblowers or to force Manning to implicate WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in a conspiracy, or both."

Obama has defended Manning's treatment as meeting U.S. standards.


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