“Manning thought the American people needed to have this information, if we’re going to really have a true democracy. So, his intentions were good. He has nothing at all to apologize for,” US anti-war activist and writer Gerry Condon told the Voice of Russia.

And now, to discuss the issue, joining me live on the phone is Gerry Condon, one of the main organizers of the actions. Hi, Gerry, thanks for joining us. First of all – what do you think about the sentence? Is it just? What’s your point?

No, it’s not just at all. My organization Veterans for Peace here in the United States is outraged. Bradley Manning has never harmed a hair on a single person’s head. What he did was to expose that the US military was regularly killing civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US government should be prosecuting war criminals, not whistleblowers. We’re really outraged and we are to immediately call on President Obama to pardon Bradley Manning.

Now, I understand your point. However, Manning himself apologized for the harm he might have caused with his leaks and said his actions were carried out with the best of intentions, as he says. Do you really think it was indeed so? Is he frank in that?

I think, we know his intense was good from what we’ve seen. He wanted this to cause a debate in the US about the registers of these wars and serious debates about the US foreign policy. He thought the American people needed to have this information, if we’re going to really have a true democracy. So, his intentions were good. He has nothing at all to apologize for. Of course, in his state… the possibility of 90 years in prison… he is at the mercy of a military court. Not surprising that he would apologize. But he really has nothing to apologize for. We should consider him a hero. He’s done the United States a big favor – and the world, as well.

Well, you say that he is a hero. I wonder, do anyone in the United States think like that? Does he have total public opinion support there?

No, of course, not. We have a wide range of opinions about all matters here in the United States. There is, however, a huge support movement for him. And now, there will be protest rallies in hundreds of cities around the country today, as well as around the world. We’re gonna continue pushing for his freedom, not only calling on President Obama to pardon him, but calling on the US military to reduce his sentence. There will also be ongoing legal efforts to appeal and to overturn his convictions. So, this struggle is far from being over, and we are confident that Bradley Manning will be out of prison in far fewer years that the 35 years that he’s been sentenced to today.

You’ve just mentioned this huge support he’s got in the United States, and we know about these numerous demonstrations there. Do you think they had any impact on the judges’ decision?

I think so. Originally, he was facing the possibility of a life in prison. He was charged of aiding the enemy. Actually, he could potentially receive a death penalty. So, I think, the huge public support helped to find him innocent in the key charge, and also made it more difficult for the judge to give him a sentence like 90 years or more than 100 years in prison. So, in that sense, even 35 years is certainly a very unjustified sentence. We can see that the public pressure did have some impact, and we continue to do so, because we continue fighting for his freedom until he is finally out of prison, and we hope that will be soon.

So, as to those demos, could you tell us how many people are actually ready to take pardon, then?

I think, that’s going to be thousands of people who demonstrated around the country today in a number of cities, around the world, particularly in Britain, Ireland and around Europe, and also in other parts of the world. No, I don’t know for sure, we’ll see, but I expect that altogether, there will be hundreds of thousands of people who will be making their voices heard today and in the coming days, and calling on President Obama to pardon Bradley Manning.

And what’s your impression, if we take all people in the United States who mostly support Bradley Manning, what figure will be? Were there any opinion polls conducted, do we know how big the support is?

I haven’t seen polls. There haven’t been any polls about Bradley Manning. We have seen polls, however, about Edward Snowden, who’s kind of a similar whistleblower, in fact, he is inspired by Bradley Manning, and the majority of American people believe Edward Snowden did the right thing and do not consider him a criminal. So, I think that, similarly, probably the majority of the American people see this is a very unfairly harsh sentence for someone who really has harmed nobody. There’s not a single person who has been injured or killed from Bradley Manning’s actions. So, I think the majority of the people in this country will see that as an unjust outcome. And we hope we’ll gonna translate this into even more public pressure for the military and the government to do the right thing – and that’s to free Bradley Manning as soon as possible.

One last question, sir. As we know, Manning now has to serve one third of the sentence before he becomes eligible for a parole. What are the chances that he will actually get this parole?

That remains to be seen. As I said, public pressure, I think, will be fruitful. There will be ongoing appeals, some of the convictions will probably be overturned on appeals, so, we hope his sentence will be even shorter. And when he comes up for a parole, I think, the public pressure will once again come, and, hopefully, by then, people will see it’s ridiculous to keep him in jail for 35 years because he merely leaked documents that probably never should have been classified in the first place.