Author on militant Islam is Manning trial witness
Expert on militant Islam to enlighten police why US soldier damaged the country's interests.
FORT MEADE (AP) - Prosecutors are asking an expert on militant Islam to help them show that US soldier Bradley Manning damaged the country s interests by disclosing huge amounts of classified information through WikiLeaks.
Youssef Aboul-Enein is set to testify Thursday at Manning s sentencing hearing as prosecutors near the end of their presentation.
Manning faces up to 90 years in prison for giving more than 700,000 documents, along with some battlefield video, to the anti-secrecy group while working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2010.
Aboul-Enein wrote "Militant Islamic Idealogy." He s also a top adviser at the Pentagon s Joint Intelligence Task Force for Combating Terrorism.
He argues that winning the war against militant Islamists requires a nuanced understanding of their ideology.
On Wednesday, the judge rejected some government evidence that the classified information Manning disclosed had a "chilling effect" on U.S. foreign relations. The judge ruled that such testimony is admissible only if the effect came directly after the information was published.
She threw out State Department Undersecretary Patrick Kennedy s testimony that leaked information published more than two years ago continues to hurt U.S. foreign relations and policymaking.
The judge also has rejected Acting Assistant Secretary Michael Kozak s testimony that the leaks made some foreign citizens, including human rights activists, less willing to speak privately with U.S. diplomats.
The judge heard testimony Wednesday from a military intelligence official, civilian James McCarl, who leads a Pentagon effort to analyze information about the enemy s use of homemade bombs, or improvised explosive devices, which McCarl said accounted for 60 to 80 percent of all casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The battlefield reports Manning leaked included five years worth of detailed information about roadside bomb and IED attacks.
