Manning lawyer: Suicide joke led to stripping - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Manning lawyer: Suicide joke led to stripping

WASHINGTON — The lawyer for a jailed soldier suspected of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks wrote Saturday that his client was stripped of his clothing at night because he had made sarcastic comments about using underwear to commit suicide.

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning’s civilian lawyer, David Coombs, wrote in a blog post that his client’s clothing was taken away at nights after Manning remarked that if he wanted to harm himself he could do that with “the elastic waistband of his underwear or with his flip-flops.”

Marine Corps officials had cited privacy rules Friday in not disclosing more about the Wednesday order that left Manning to sleep naked in his jail cell at the brig at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va. His attorney has called the treatment degrading.