Bradley Manning Charged By U.S. Army With 22 Counts, Including ‘Aiding The Enemy’

After 10 months of holding Private First Class Bradley Manning in detainment at a Marine base in Virginia, the U.S. Army has at last filed its real charges against him, NBC News reports. He faces 22 counts, including downloading and transmitting classified information, fraud, and aiding the enemy (for “wrongfully obtaining classified material for the purpose of posting it on the Internet, knowing that the information would be accessed by the enemy”), a charge that carries the possibility of the death penalty, and while the Army says it will not seek it, a judge could hand it down anyhow. Wikileaks is not mentioned in the charges, and prosecutors have not tied him to Julian Assange.