WikiLeaks detainee describes his harsh confinement

FORT MEADE, Md. -- An Army private charged in the biggest security breach in U.S. history testified Thursday that he felt like a doomed, caged animal after he was arrested in Baghdad for allegedly sending classified information to the secret-spilling website WikiLeaks.

Speaking publicly for the first time about his May 2010 arrest and subsequent confinement, Pfc. Bradley Manning, 24, addressed the nearly two months he spent in a cell in a segregation tent at Camp Arifjan, an Army installation in Kuwait, before he was moved stateside.

"I remember thinking I'm going to die. I'm stuck inside this cage," Manning said in response to questions from defense attorney David Coombs. "I just thought I was going to die in that cage. And that's how I saw it -- an animal cage."

Manning was sent to a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va., in July 2010. His lawyers are seeking dismissal of all charges, contending his pretrial confinement at Quantico was needlessly harsh.

His testimony came on the third day of a pretrial hearing at Fort Meade, the sprawling Army post between Washington and Baltimore.

Manning said that at Quantico, where he was held for nine months in highly restrictive maximum custody, "I started to feel like I was mentally going back to Kuwait mode, in that lonely, dark, black hole place, mentally."

Manning said he never sank that low but grew frustrated after five months in which he spent up to 23 hours a day in a windowless, 6-by-8-foot cell.

He said once he was forced to stand naked at attention for morning count.

Manning is trying to avoid trial in the WikiLeaks case. He argues he was punished enough when he was locked alone in a small cell for nearly nine months at Quantico, where he also had to sleep naked for several nights.

The military contends the treatment was proper, given Manning's classification then as a maximum-security detainee.

Earlier Thursday, a military judge accepted terms under which Manning was willing to plead guilty to eight charges for sending classified documents to the WikiLeaks website.

Col. Denise Lind's ruling doesn't mean the pleas have been formally accepted. But Lind approved the language of the offenses to which Manning has said he would admit. Those offenses carry a maximum prison term of 16 years.

Manning made the offer as a way of accepting responsibility for the leak. Government officials have not said whether they would continue prosecuting him for the other 14 counts he faces, including aiding the enemy. That offense carries a maximum penalty of life in prison.

Under the proposal, Manning would admit to willfully sending the following material: a battlefield video file, some classified memos, more than 20 Iraq War logs, more than 20 Afghanistan War logs and other classified materials. He would also plead guilty to wrongfully storing classified information.

Other prospective witnesses include a military psychiatrist who examined Manning at Quantico, and the former commander of the confinement facility at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where Manning was later moved, re-evaluated and given a medium-security classification.