Manning transferred to Fort Leavenworth

Bradley Manning, charged with providing the WikiLeaks whistleblowing site with thousands of classified US government documents, was transferred last Wednesday to Fort Leavenworth's Joint Regional Correctional Facility. He had previously been held in harsh conditions at Quantico Marine Brig, in Virginia, since May of last year.
Earlier this month, 250 distinguished legal scholars condemned the military's treatment of Manning, characterizing it as not only shameful but unconstitutional.
Mannign was being held in solitary confinement 23 hours a day, and deprived of his underwear every night, purportedly for his own safety.
Juan Mendez, the UN special rapporteur on torture, has been trying to evaluate Manning's conditions, but prevented from doing so by US authorities, who refuse to allow him an unmonitored visit with him.
I am acting on a complaint that the regimen of this detainee amounts to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or torture...until I have all the evidence in front of me, I cannot say whether he has been treated inhumanely, he told The Guardian earlier this month...
Mendez would be authorized to meet with Manning, but only with a guard also present.
At such meetings, anything the prisoner says can then be used against him during his court martial...
Manning will be placed in a single cell in Fort Leavenworth, and he would not receive abusive treatment, officials said, according to Reuters.
It seems therefore, that the Obama administration no longer considers it useful to abuse Bradley Manning, as the young man's case receives ever gretaer attention...
It is also evident however, that it is convinced that Manning is guilty as charged, even though his trial is still many months away, and that, as such, he is considered innocent.
On Thursday, President Obama made this extraordinary statement: we're a nation of laws. We don't let individuals make their own decisions about how the laws operate. He broke the law.
Can we now reasonably expect Manning to receive a fair trial, since the verdict is already known?
Is the US still a nation of laws, when serious offenders such as those responsible for Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, "enhanced interrogation techniques", indefinite detention, warrantless wiretapping, secret prisons, ghost detainess and so forth are not prosecuted, let alone investigated, while a Private First Class accused of revealing information that the State Department itself concluded did little lasting damage to the US is already considered guilty before his trial has even begun?
(the photograph of an activist protesting against Manning's detention is by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)