Chelsea Manning says she’ll never testify, seeks release

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — Former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning is offering a new legal argument in her effort to be released from a Virginia jail.

Manning has been jailed in Alexandria for two months for refusing to testify to a grand jury investigating the website Wikileaks. She appealed her incarceration to the federal appeals court in Richmond, but a three-judge panel unanimously rejected her appeal last month.

In a motion filed Monday in Alexandria, Manning argues she has proven she’ll stick to her principles and should therefore be released. Federal law only allows a recalcitrant witness to be jailed on civil contempt if there’s a chance that the incarceration will coerce the witness into testifying.

Manning served seven years in a military prison for leaking a trove of documents to Wikileaks.