Chelsea Manning to be freed in May after Barack Obama commutes her sentence

Outgoing US President Barack Obama has commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, who was jailed for leaking intelligence documents to WikiLeaks.

Ms Manning, 29, will be released from jail on May 17 of this year after she was among 273 prisoners granted clemency by Mr Obama.

She had been sentenced to a 35-year term in August 2013, after it was revealed she was the source of intelligence documents obtained by WikiLeaks in 2010.

Ms Manning is currently held in a maximum security military prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. She was reportedly moved into solitary confinement after a suicide attempt last year.

WikiLeaks hailed Ms Manning's pending release as a "victory" on Twitter and thanked supporters for their efforts to secure her release.

Last week, WikiLeaks said its founder Julian Assange would agree to be extradited to the US on sexual assault charges if Ms Manning's clemency was granted. 

Edward Snowden, a National Security Agency contractor who leaked details of a US government surveillance program, was not granted a pardon by Mr Obama.

Mr Snowden fled to Russia via Hong Kong in 2013 to seek asylum, days after charges of violating the Espionage Act and theft of government property were brought against him.

Mr Snowden, who had not sought his own pardon but campaigned for Ms Manning's release, celebrated the announcement on Twitter.

The White House released a statement today confirming 209 prisoners are to have their sentences commuted and a further 64 will be pardoned.

"Today, 273 individuals learned that the President has given them a second chance," the statement from Counsel to the President Neil Eggleston read.

"With today’s 209 grants of commutation, the President has now commuted the sentences of 1385 individuals – the most grants of commutation issued by any President in this nation’s history.  

"While the mercy the President has shown his 1597 clemency recipients is remarkable, we must remember that clemency is an extraordinary remedy, granted only after the President has concluded that a particular individual has demonstrated a readiness to make use of his or her second chance."

Ms Manning, then 22, was deployed by the US Army to Iraq in 2009 as an intelligence analyst and the next year leaked more than 400,000 classified army reports.

An estimated further 250,000 diplomatic cables were also sent to WikiLeaks. 

Ms Manning was later charged with 22 offences and convicted by a court martial in July 2013.

She was acquitted of the charge of aiding the enemy but sentenced to 35 years' imprisonment the following month. 

It was the longest prison sentence ever handed down in the US for someone convicted over the leaking of information.

Also among those pardoned was James Cartwright, a former four-star US general who lied to the FBI about his discussions with a journalist about Iran's nuclear program.

General Cartwright pleaded guilty in October last year after earlier denying he provided information to New York Times reporter David Stangar about Stuxnet, a US-Israeli program that targeted Iranian facilities with a computer virus.