It’s been a busy week here at the Bradley Manning Support Network office! After coming back from a strategy planning staff retreat at the end of last week, here are some of the important recent updates:

UN special rapporteur on torture, Juan Mendez, said the US had has broken rules on torture by monitoring conversations with PFC Bradley Manning. In his state (full text found here) Mr. Mendez states that he has been unable to access Bradley Manning to assess his condition and investigate if his treatment at Quanico amounts to torture. If the United States has not engaged in “torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” why would they hide Bradley from a third party investigator? The fact that UN investigators are being prevented from adequately consulting with clients in a country which is a party to UN human rights guidelines sets a troubling precedent.

A Marine Corps investigation into the conditions under which Bradley Manning was held during his incarceration at Quantico produced contested results Thursday when Col. Daniel Choike overruled the report’s one critique. Corrections Section Chief, Chief Warrant Officer-5 Abel Galaviz overwhelmingly approved of the treatment Manning received, rejecting the complaint he made as “without merit,” but he did determine that the prison violated Navy policy by continuing to keep him on suicide watch one to three days after psychiatrists warned that he was not a threat. Choike overruled this portion of the report, stating that removal from suicide watch does not have to be immediate, and voicing concern over the reactions of human rights proponents.

Democracy Now! has an interview with David House about the secret Wikileaks grand jury, the current government repression he faces, and the ongoing fight to free Bradley. House states, “In my mind, this reeks of the Pentagon Papers investigation,” says House. “Richard Nixon’s [Department of Justice] 40 years ago attempted to curtail the freedoms of the press and politically regulate the press through the use of policy created around the espionage investigation of the New York Times. I feel the WikiLeaks case we have going on now provides Obama’s DOJ ample opportunity to continue this attempt to politically regulate the U.S. media.”

Robert Meeropol, son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, has issued a statement in which he says that he “believe[s] that the conditions of his imprisonment, including the Abu Ghraib-style humiliation of being forced to strip and surrender his clothing nightly, amounted to torture” and that Bradley’s case is in the same vein of government repression and misconduct that his parents suffered.

On Thursday, Wired.com posted the full Manning-Lamo logs, a full year after receiving exclusive possession of transcripts of these chats. The full contents of the chat logs have prompted reporters from both Spiegel International and the UK Guardian to declare Bradley an uncontested whistleblower.