(CN) - The suspected source of the biggest leak in U.S. history faced unparalleled pretrial abuse on orders from a three-star general, attorneys for Pfc. Bradley Manning said in a blistering motion to dismiss.
"The defense does not believe that there has ever been such an egregious case of unlawful pretrial punishment in Army history," lead defense attorney David Coombs wrote. "This court needs to send a message that an unlawful order to keep a pretrial detainee in the equivalent of solitary confinement for almost nine months cannot - and will not - be tolerated."
Manning, 24, allegedly sent WikiLeaks more than 700,000 files, from an Army base in Iraq where he served as an intelligence specialist before being demoted to private first class.
The documents and videos exposed once-suppressed counts of Iraqi and Afghani civilian fatalities, U.S. diplomats' candid critiques of purported allies, and footage of a Baghdad airstrike that killed two Reuters employees and 10 other people.
Authorities detained Manning as the suspected source in late May 2010 and sent him days later to Kuwait, where his mental health is said to have deteriorated.
The subsequent transfer of Manning to a now-shuttered Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va., from July 29, 2010, to April 19, 2011, sparked international outcry, as reports trickled out that he had been forced to spend 23 hours a day in isolation, ordered to strip naked and denied permission to exercise in his windowless, 6-by-8 cell.
U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez called Manning's treatment "cruel, degrading and inhuman" in an interview with the Guardian, and added that he may have had harsher words if the brig allowed him to visit the soldier without monitoring.
Then-State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley called Manning's treatment "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid" at a press conference, and subsequently resigned.
But President Barack Obama, the Pentagon and Quantico officials continued to defend the confinement conditions as necessary to prevent Manning from harming or killing himself.
Manning's attorneys say nine months of assessments by brig psychologists and prison staff belie that rationale.
The names of the allegedly complicit Quantico staffers are blacked out, along with other material, in the 110-page defense motion, because of classification policies in U.S. court-martial cases.
Coombs revealed on his blog, however, that the "senior brig officer" who sent Manning to maximum-security confinement acted upon the "marching orders" of a three-star general.
On Aug. 3, 2010, an unnamed brig psychiatrist called Manning "courteous, respectful and well-spoken," and the mental health staff have consistently reached similar conclusions, according to the motion.
Coombs described a telling standoff between Quantico officials and its mental health staff that allegedly occurred on Jan. 13, 2011.
"Nothing is going to happen to PFC Manning on my watch," a senior officer allegedly told a brig psychiatrist at the meeting. "Nothing's going to change. He won't be able to hurt himself and he won't be able to get away, and our way of making sure of this is that he will remain on this status indefinitely."
According to the motion, the psychiatrist replied: "Sir, I am concerned because if you're going to do that, maybe you want to call it something else, because it's not based on anything from behavioral health."