Former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning was released from jail in Virginia on Thursday more than two months after being arrested for refusing to answer questions before a grand jury about leaking classified information to WikiLeaks.
Manning was released after the grand jury’s term expired. She was detained at the William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Center in Alexandria, Virginia, for 62 days.
In a statement, Manning’s attorneys said she would continue to “refuse to answer questions and will use every available legal defense to prove to [U.S. District Judge Anthony] Trenga that she has just cause for her refusal to give testimony.”
Shortly before her release, Manning was immediately served with a subpoena requiring her to appear before another grand jury on May 17.
Her commitment to refusing to answer questions may be grounds for another arrest.
“It is, therefore, conceivable that she will once again be held in contempt of court and be returned to the custody of the Alexandria Detention Center, possibly as soon as next Thursday, May 16,” Manning’s lawyers said.
Manning was sentenced to jail on March 8 after refusing to testify before a grand jury about disclosing more than 750,000 classified documents to WikiLeaks while serving as an intelligence analyst for the U.S. Army in Iraq in 2009.
While in jail, Manning was placed in solitary confinement for 28 days
In a statement issued by her attorneys earlier this month, Manning described grand juries as “simply outdated tools used by the federal government to harass and disrupt political opponents and activists in fishing expeditions.”
“The way I am being treated proves what a corrupt and abusive tool this truly is,” she said. “With each passing day my disappointment and frustration grow, but so too do my commitments to doing the right thing and continuing to refuse to submit.”
Manning previously served seven years of a 35-year sentence for leaking the classified documents.