The controversial pretrial conditions offered by the U.S. military to WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning — like being held in a claustrophobic, windowless jail cell for 23 hours each day — will now amount to just a little over three months trimmed off any future sentence, a military judge ruled late Tuesday afternoon. "[Colonel Denise] Lind found that Manning suffered illegal pretrial punishment during nine months in a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va. She awarded a total of 112 days off any prison sentence Manning gets if he is convicted," reported the Associated Press. 

Manning appeared on the stand last November in his ongoing trial to tell a shudder-inducing story of making do in a tiny, 8-foot-by-8-foot jail cell for close to a year. "The judge said that Manning's confinement was 'more rigorous than necessary.' She added that the conditions 'became excessive in relation to legitimate government interests,'" the AP adds.

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Alexander Abad-Santos