Wikileaks soidier 'source' charged

Bradley Manning faces military wrath

The US military has charged soldier Bradley Manning  with leaking a video of a US helicopter attack in Iraq to the website, WikiLeaks.

Manning is accused of transferring classified data to an unauthorised third party.

According to a charge sheet published online,  Manning was charged on Monday with eight violations of US criminal law and four violations of US Army regulations concerning the use of classified information and computers.

The Army says he downloaded a classified video and transmitted to a third party violatiing of a section of the Espionage Act,

Manning was areested Baghdad in June, two months after the horrific video of the US air strike was published on Wikileaks.

Manning is also facing charges for allegedly accessing to a secret network to obtain more than 150,000 US state department cables, some of them classified. Army spokesman Lt. Col. Eric Bloom told Wired that more than 50 of these cables were

If convicted of all charges, Manning could face a prison sentence of as much as 52 years, Bloom said.

Manning was put under pre-trial confinement at the end of May, after he disclosed to a former hacker that he

Manning is said to have confessed to leaking the video of the helicopter attack to WikiLeaks in online chats with a former  hacker.

WikiLeaks says it does not keep personal records of the people who leak it stuff.