Chelsea Manning, a former U.S. Army soldier serving a prison sentence for helping leak classified U.S. government information, was released Wednesday from a prison hospital after attempting suicide by hanging, media reports said.
According to CNN, U.S. Army spokesman Col. Patrick Seiber said Manning was taken to the hospital yesterday to be monitored. He also said that decision was made after the attempted suicide.
However, Manning’s attorney did not confirm the report to CNN.
Manning is a trans woman who was born as Bradley Manning. But in 2013, Manning requested to identify as a female and the Army consequently allowed hormone therapy to begin.
Manning is currently serving a 35-year prison sentence for violating the Espionage Act by illegally submitting more than 700,000 digital files depicting battlefield logs, diplomatic cables and video clips. A significant portion of the materials were published by WikiLeaks.
Following the sentence, Manning was dishonorably discharged from the Army.
Last week, the Department of Defense announced transgender individuals may serve openly in the U.S. military, eliminating the ban on transgender troops and additionally announced the military will financially assist service members through gender reassignment.
In response, Manning published a column in The Guardian on the issue.
“Gender presentation should reflect the person that you are,” Manning wrote. “When you lose control of your gender presentation you lose an important aspect of your identity and existence. By setting so many caveats, time lines, standards and training, the military is making this far, far more complicated and bureaucratic than it needs to be. The simple reality is that we are who we say we are.”
Manning is at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., a maximum-security facility.
