2010-12-17 Statement from WikiLeaks Regarding the Bradley Manning Defense Fund

There have been some attempts in the last week to create a controversy regarding Wikileaks' support for Bradley Manning and his legal defense fund. As anyone watching the news will recognize, Wikileaks has had difficulties in the last months obtaining and accessing their funding, but they are as committed to supporting Bradley Manning as always and have issued the following statement:

We will honour what we have pledged. We are quite strained right now and do not have full access to our limited resources, however, we have forwarded £10,000 (sterling) for the moment and informed Mr Coombs (Bradley's lawyer) about the transactions and it will take a few days to go through.

As acknowledged in the article linked above, Wikileaks' support for Manning has already resulted in substantial support for his defenders:

Loraine Reitman, a member of the group’s steering committee, shied away from placing blame on WikiLeaks.

“WikiLeaks is the reason we’ve been able to get so much money and donations,” she told Threat Level. “They’ve been linking to us and tweeting about us, and every time they do it, donations come in.”