Bradley Manning sentenced to 35 years in prison over leaks Bradley Manning, the US army private who leaked classified documents to WikiLeaks, was sentenced to 35 years in prison following his conviction on espionage and theft charges. He will be eligible for parole. The sentence ended a drawn-out legal saga over the fate of a man who has become a polarising figure in American politics, hailed by some as a brave whistleblower who shed light on controversial US policies and denounced as a traitor by others. The sentence by Colonel Denise Lind, the judge in the case, was far less than the maximum 90-year sentence Manning could have received. He was found guilty of leaking more than 700,000 documents and battlefield videos to WikiLeaks, the website founded by Julian Assange. Experts said Manning could serve as little as 10 years under the judge's order. He was also dishonourably discharged on a reduced rank and was told he had to forfeit all pay. He's gotten off lightly. There was no choice but to jail him," said James Lewis, a security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The people that do this kind of thing are too preoccupied with themselves to think about consequences, so we need to do more to avoid future Mannings or Snowdens. The leaks painted a damning picture of American activities abroad, including never before seen footage of the US mistakenly gunning down civilians from a helicopter in 2007 in Iraq, killing civilians and two Reuters journalists. They revealed new details about the number of Iraqi civilian casualties, abuse of Iraqi detainees under US supervision, tensions between the US and Pakistan and the names of Afghan informers. Amnesty International UK said Manning's defence attorneys would file a petition for clemency with the US Department of Justice, which reviews pardons before such requests are passed on to Barack Obama, the US president. The case will also automatically head to an appeals court, though that process will be lengthy. The human rights group said some of the documents that were leaked pointed to "potential human rights violations and breaches of international humanitarian law by US troops." It pointed out that Manning had already served three years in pre-trial detention, including 11 months in solitary confinement. I'm sorry that I hurt the United States. I am apologising for the unexpected results of my actions Bradley Manning "The president doesn't need to wait for this sentence to be appealed to commute it; he can and should do so right now," said Widney Brown, Amnesty's senior director of international law. Bradley Manning acted on the belief that he could spark a meaningful public debate on the costs of war and specifically on the conduct of the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Obama administration has been criticised for heavy-handed treatment of whistleblowers, including Manning, and has been tested by a steady stream of leaks from within the administration and from rogue sources, including Edward Snowden. The former US National Security Agency contractor has sought refuge in Russia after releasing caches of information about US surveillance programmes. Last week, Manning, a former army intelligence analyst, appealed for clemency. In July, Manning was found guilty of nearly all of the charges that had been levelled against him during his two month military trial at Fort Meade, except for the most serious: aiding the enemy. To have been found guilty of giving aid to the enemy, the court would have had to find that Manning passed specific information to US "enemies."