Chelsea Manning, shown here in 2017, was jailed in Alexandria on Friday for refusing to testify before a grand jury.

Steven Senne / AP

Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst who leaked hundreds of thousands of military and State Department documents in 2010, has been jailed in Virginia after refusing to testify before a grand jury in a case involving WikiLeaks.

After a Friday morning contempt hearing in Alexandria, in which Manning asserted she would not testify, Judge Claude Hilton of the U.S. District Court in Eastern Virginia found her in contempt of court and ordered her to jail. She is being held in the Alexandria Detention Center.

Hilton ordered Manning to remain there either until she testifies, or until the case’s grand jury ends. The details of the case itself are sealed, but Manning said in a statement on Friday that the case involves her 2010 leaks. Outlets including CNN are theorizing that Manning’s involvement means that prosecutors may be pursuing charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

“The grand jury’s questions pertained to disclosures from nine years ago, and took place six years after an in-depth computer forensics case, in which I testified for almost a full day about these events,” Manning said in her Friday statement. “I stand by my previous public testimony.”

“I will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been historically used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech,” Manning said.

Manning said she cited her first, fourth, and sixth amendment and other statutory rights during Thursday questioning, which resulted in her Friday contempt hearing.

Manning, a trans woman, pled guilty to leaking secret information in July 2013. She was freed from a Kansas military prison in 2017, where she was about seven years in to a 35-year prison term. President Barack Obama commuted her sentence shortly before leaving office.

Manning moved to North Bethesda, where she still lives, after leaving prison. She ran for a Senate seat in Maryland last year.

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