U.S. soldier Chelsea Manning, who is serving 35 years in prison for leaking classified documents, is asking President Barack Obama to commute her sentence to time served. She said in her application to the president, released by her attorneys, that there is no historical precedent for such an extreme sentence for leaking documents.
Manning, a former intelligence analyst in Iraq, has served more than six years of a 35-year sentence for leaking more than 700,000 secret military documents as well as battlefield videos to WikiLeaks.
Since being convicted, the soldier, originally called Bradley Manning, has said she identifies as a women. She tried to commit suicide last month while in solitary confinement, where she was placed after an earlier suicide attempt.
Manning wrote in her application to the president that she is living through "a cycle of anxiety, anger, hopelessness, loss and depression."
She is being held at the Fort Leavenworth military prison in Kansas. Manning is not asking for a pardon, meaning her conviction will stay on her record.