President Obama has commuted the 35-year sentence of Chelsea Manning, the soldier jailed for leaking information to WikiLeaks.

It is expected that the former Army intelligence analyst will now be out in May.

She is one of 209 inmates whose sentences have been shortened by the outgoing president.

They have not been pardoned and as a result their conviction and criminal records still stand.

Manning, who was born a male and arrested in 2010 as Bradley Manning but now identifies as female, was convicted of espionage in 2013.


She was found guilty of providing more than 700,000 documents, diplomatic cables, videos and battlefield accounts to the whistleblowing website, in what is believed to be the largest breach of classified materials in US history.

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Manning is being held at the Fort Leavenworth military prison in Kansas.

During her trial, she accepted responsibility for leaking the material, but said she was confronting gender dysphoria at the time of the leaks while on operation in Iraq.

The 29-year-old went on hunger strike while in jail over her demand to receive gender transition surgery.

Among the files Manning leaked in 2010 was a video of a US Apache helicopter firing on suspected Iraqi insurgents in 2007, an attack that killed a dozen people, including two Reuters journalists.

In May 2016, Manning's lawyers appealed against her conviction, saying "no whistleblower in American history has been sentenced this harshly".

She issued a statement asking for clemency, which was published on her website freechelsea.com.

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It said: "I have served a sufficiently long sentence. I am not asking for a pardon... I understand that the various collateral consequences of the court-martial conviction will stay on my record forever. The sole relief I am asking for is to be released from military prison after serving six years of confinement."

In recent months, a Twitter and media campaign has been calling for her release, with Amnesty International among those taking part.

WikiLeaks claimed a "victory" in a tweet but the White House said Mr Obama's decision was not influenced by the website or its founder Julian Assange.

If Obama grants Manning clemency Assange will agree to US extradition despite clear unconstitutionality of DoJ case https://t.co/MZU30SlfGK — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) January 12, 2017

In an earlier tweet, WikiLeaks' Twitter feed said Mr Assange - who is currently holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London - would agree to be extradited if Mr Obama agreed to grant Manning clemency.

Edward Snowden, another WikiLeaks whistleblower who fled to Russia to escape the consequences, tweeted: "In five more months, you will be free. Thank you for what you did for everyone, Chelsea. Stay strong a while longer!"

Russia has since announced Snowden has been given leave to remain in the country for "another couple of years".

House speaker Paul Ryan said: "This is just outrageous. Chelsea Manning's treachery put American lives at risk and exposed some of our nation's most sensitive secrets. President Obama now leaves in place a dangerous precedent that those who compromise our national security won't be held accountable for their crimes."

Most of the others whose sentences are being reduced have been serving jail time for nonviolent drug offences.

Mr Obama has also pardoned 64 other people, including retired General James Cartwright, who was charged with making false statements during a probe into the disclosure of classified information.