President Barack Obama has commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, the U.S. soldier whom prosecutors deemed a traitor for sending hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks.
The commuted sentence, announced by Obama on Tuesday, will allow Manning to be freed on May 17 of this year. She was originally set to be freed in 2045, according to the New York Times.
Manning has been incarcerated since 2010, after she confessed to sending the secret military and diplomatic documents to the anti-secrecy organization. While she was seen as a traitor by some, many more considered her a whistleblower and hero. In 2013, she was sentenced to 35 years in prison for violating the Espionage Act and other offenses.
A source within the Justice Department told NBC News that Manning’s commutation was on Obama’s short list before it was announced.
Obama also commuted the sentence of 209 other individuals on Tuesday, and pardoned 64 others, according to a White House press release.
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