A FORMER US Army private who leaked top secret documents has been praised by the Oxford Union after picking up an award.

Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Bradley Manning, was awarded, in her absence, this year’s Sam Adams Prize for integrity in intelligence and the honour was marked with a ceremony on Wednesday night.

The prize is awarded annually by a group of former CIA workers.

Awards spokesman David Swanson said that Oxford Union held the event to recognise her “for casting much-needed daylight on the true toll and cause of civilian casualties in Iraq, human rights abuses by US and coalition forces, mercenaries, and contractors and the roles that spying and bribery play in international diplomacy”.

Fellow intelligence documents leaker Edward Snowden made a video for the ceremony in which he also congratulated Ms Manning.

 

Ms Manning is currently serving a 35-year prison sentence in a US military prison for leaking nearly a million classified US government records to WikiLeaks.