[The Nation (Nairobi)] The rights group put pressure on the British government yesterday to ensure that the army private's detention conditions adhered to international standards after it emerged that the soldier's Welsh mother made him a British citizen.
"His (Manning's) Welsh parentage means the UK government should demand his 'maximum custody' status does not impair his ability to defend himself," Amnesty's UK director, Kate Allen, said.
"We would also like to see Foreign Office officials visiting him just as they would any other British person jugged overseas and potentially facing trial on very serious charges," she added. Extracts from a new Guardian book, "WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's war on secrecy," detailed how the soldier spent four years in Wales after his parents split up in 2001.
In another excerpt, published in today's Guardian, it is claimed that Manning "spends 23 hours a day alone in a six foot (1.8 metre) by 12 foot cell, with one hour's exercise in which he walks figures-of-eight in an empty room." "Manning's friends say he is being subject to near-torture in an effort to break him.''
Sing it, Bob...
Now all the criminals in their coats and their ties
Are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise
While Manning sits like Buddha in a six-foot cell
An innocent man in a living hell