Bradley Manning, a US serviceman held for allegedly passing classified documents to WikiLeaks, is headed to a US military facility for a potentially "multi-year" stay with an upgrade in conditions, the Pentagon has said.
Manning's imminent transfer to a Kansas military facility with less harsh detention conditions comes after intense criticism of his detention conditions in Quantico, Virginia.
"At this juncture of the case we have decided that the new joint correctional facility at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, is the most appropriate facility for Private Manning for continued pretrial detention," Jeh Johnson, the general counsel of the Department of Defense, said at a news conference.
The 23-year-old Welsh-born US army intelligence officer, who allegedly provided the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks with a trove of secret documents, has been imprisoned at Quantico since July 2010. Manning's detention conditions included solitary confinement and being forced to sleep naked. Amnesty International in February called Manning's detention "harsh and punitive" and urged Britain to intervene on his behalf.(AFP)