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Peter Tatchell claims WikiLeaks soldier Bradley Manning is a ‘gay hero’

Bradley Manning, the US soldier held for allegedly leaking secret government files, is a “gay hero”, rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has claimed.

Mr Tatchell said that if Mr Manning had leaked the documents to WikiLeaks, he should be praised as a human rights defender.

The former military intelligence analyst has been held in custody for the last year. He was arrested in May 2010 in Iraq on suspicion of passing restricted material to the whistleblower website and has been charged with 34 offences, including making information available to the enemy.

While the charges he faces carry a maximum penalty of death, US military prosecutors have said they will not seek this. Instead, he may face life in prison if convicted.

The material in question included 700,000 US diplomatic and military cables and footage of a July 2007 airstrike on Baghdad. The 23-year-old’s supporters claim that the leaked files expose civilian deaths which had been covered up by the military.

Mr Manning is gay but was unable to declare his sexual orientation under the US military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy.

Speaking today, Mr Tatchell said that the soldier was “inspired by his commitment to human rights” and had attended gay Pride marches and campaigned against bans on out gay troops and same-sex marriage.

Describing Mr Manning as a “humanist and a man with a conscience”, Mr Tatchell said he had allegedly been driven to release the files because he “became disillusioned with his country’s foreign and military policy [and believed] it was betraying the US ideals of democracy and human rights”.

“It is only (allegedly) thanks to Bradley Manning that we now know the truth about this slaughter of innocent civilians – and about the killings of hundreds of other civilians in unreported and undocumented incidents,” Mr Tatchell said.

The soldier, who is waiting to hear if he will face a court martial, was recently moved to another jail after concerns were raised about his well-being.

He was required to strip regularly and was held in a bare cell. Last month, he was moved to a medium-security prison in Kansas following lengthy assessments. He is now able to live alongside other prisoners and his surroundings have been described as more comfortable.

Mr Manning’s mother Susan, who is Welsh, criticised British MPs last month for not helping him.

The Foreign Office said last month that the British embassy in Washington had relayed MPs’ concerns about Mr Manning’s treatment to the White House.

Mr Tatchell has urged Mr Manning’s supporters to take action, including writing to the soldier, contacting their MPs and lobbying the US embassy in London.

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Delaware governor signs civil unions into law

The governor of the US state of Delaware has signed a civil unions bill into law.

As he signed the bill yesterday, Governor Jack Markell told gay couples in a 500-strong audience: “Your family is now equal under the law.”

Once the law comes into force on January 1st 2012, gay couples in the state will have “all of the same rights, benefits, protections and responsibilities as married persons under Delaware law,” the measure says.

Faiths may perform the ceremonies if they wish, but cannot be forced to.

Delaware joins six other states in allowing civil unions for gay couples.

Five US states and the District of Columbia allow gay couples to marry.

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Uganda to debate gay execution bill tomorrow

Uganda’s parliament will debate the anti-homosexuality bill tomorrow (Friday).

There was confusion yesterday over the status of the bill, which was apparently removed and then replaced on the day’s order paper.

Reports now say that it is scheduled to be discussed tomorrow. Today is a national holiday.

The bill’s author, MP David Bahati, has claimed that the most extreme clause on the bill, the death penalty for “aggravated” homosexuality, has been removed.

However, no amended version of the legislation has been published.

If passed in its current form, the bill will demand the execution of gay people who have sex while HIV-positive or with minors or disabled people. The death penalty would also be used for repeat offenders.

Other clauses would require people such as family members, teachers and doctors to report cases to homosexuality to the police within 24 hours or face a prison sentence.

More than 1.4 million people have signed petitions against the bill, which US President Barack Obama called “odious”.

Earlier this week, British foreign secretary William Hague said he was pressuring Uganda to drop the bill.

The legislation is popular with Ugandan MPs and citizens. Homosexuality is viewed as un-African and against Christian values.

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Gay MP David Laws apologises for expenses claims

Liberal Democrat MP David Laws has apologised for his expenses claims after he was found to have wrongly claimed £40,000 in rent paid to his boyfriend.

The former chief secretary to the Treasury resigned from the Cabinet last May after the claims were revealed. He claimed that he wanted to keep his sexual orientation secret.

After an investigation, a Commons committee and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, John Lyon, concluded today that he committed “a series of serious breaches of rules” for money he claimed from the taxpayer.

Yeovil MP Mr Laws is to be suspended from the Commons for seven days – a rare punishment seen as second in severity to expulsion. The suspension will begin on June 7th. He will also apologise to parliament.

The commissioner found that Mr Laws should not have been paying rent to a partner but said: “Mr Laws’ desire for secrecy led him to act in a way which was not compatible with the standards expected of an MP”.

It was also found that he had claimed for maintenance and repair costs for the London property. While these may have been acceptable if he was a cohabitant, Mr Laws was a lodger.

Mr Laws had lived with his boyfriend, the lobbyist James Lundie, for seven years. In 2006, Commons rules changed to bar MPs claiming expenses for rent paid to partners or family members. Mr Laws says he did not declare the relationship because he wanted it to stay a secret.

Mr Lyon wrote: “I have no reason to doubt that Mr Laws’ primary motivation was to keep secret the sexuality that he had kept hidden. . . I have no evidence that Mr Laws made his claims with the intention of benefiting himself or his partner in conscious breach of the rules.”

The committee and commissioner found that the MP had already repaid £56,592 – the full amount of his second home allowance claims between July 2006 and July 2009.

They accepted that the MP could have claimed “considerably more” under Commons rules if he had been open about the relationship.

In a statement, Mr Laws said: “I accept the conclusions of the inquiry and take full responsibility for the mistakes which I have made.

“I apologise to my constituents and to Parliament. Each of us should be our own sternest critic, and I recognise that my attempts to keep my personal life private were in conflict with my duty as an MP to ensure that my claims were in every sense above reproach.

“I should have resolved this dilemma in the public interest and not in the interests of my privacy.

“However, from the moment these matters became public, I have made clear that my motivation was to protect my privacy, rather than to benefit from the system of parliamentary expenses, and I am pleased that the Commissioner has upheld that view.

“I have also, from the very beginning, made clear that I believed that my secrecy about my private life led me to make lower overall claims than would otherwise be the case, and this has been confirmed by the Parliamentary Commissioner and by the committee.

“The taxpayer gained, rather than lost out, from my desire for secrecy, though I fully accept that this is not an adequate reason for breaking the rules.

“This last year has been a difficult one, and I am grateful to family, friends, constituents and colleagues for their support and understanding.”

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