Chelsea Manning, who has been serving a 35-year prison sentence for her role in leaking U.S. government secrets, was treated and released from a prison hospital Wednesday after she tried to hang herself, according to media reports.
The transgender soldier, formerly known as Bradley Manning, was convicted in 2013 of espionage and other offenses for sending WikiLeaks more than 700,000 digital files including battlefield logs, diplomatic cables and video clips.
Both CNN and TMZ reported that the incident occurred at Fort Leavenworth, an all-male facility in Kansas. Few other details about the incident were immediately known. TMZ, citing prison officials, reported that she has been released from the hospital and is being monitored.
Manning recently wrote a column from prison for The Guardian about the new U.S. rules allowing transgender people to openly serve in the military.
"Gender presentation should reflect the person that you are," Manning wrote. "When you lose control of your gender presentation you lose an important aspect of your identity and existence. By setting so many caveats, time lines, standards, and training, the military is making this far, far, more complicated and bureaucratic than it needs to be. The simple reality is that we are who we say we are."
