During a media tour of Fort Leavenworth prison, Lt. Col. Dawn Hilton, without referring to Manning specifically, said inmates who were considered a danger to themselves or others would not be placed with the general prison population.
The new detention conditions would represent a marked change for Manning, who was transferred to Fort Leavenworth last week from the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va., where he'd been held since his arrest last year. There, Manning was locked alone in his cell for 23 hours a day and had to surrender his clothes at night in favor of a military-issued, suicide-prevention smock.
Manning's attorney and supporters called the conditions inhumane and needlessly harsh, and Amnesty International said Manning's treatment may violate his human rights.
At Fort Leavenworth's prison, Manning will be housed with about 10 other pre-trial inmates. He will have his own cell, be issued standard prison clothing and have access to a communal area except for the "lights out" period overnight.
Manning is accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, including Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, confidential State Department cables and a classified military video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack in Iraq that killed a Reuters news photographer and his driver.
His transfer to Leavenworth came a bit more than a week after a U.N. torture investigator, Juan Mendez, complained that he was denied a request to make an unmonitored visit to Manning. Pentagon officials said he could meet with Manning, but it is customary to give only the detainee's lawyer confidential visits.
Mendez said a monitored conversation would be counter to the practice of his U.N. mandate.
A few days later, a committee of Germany's parliament protested about Manning's treatment to the White House.
The Army gave the media an unusual glimpse of life inside a military prison to combat the allegations that Manning was being mistreated.
Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches law at Yale and heads the National Institute of Military Justice in Washington, said he thinks the media tour is a positive step.
"Frankly, the military confinement and correction system has been very little studied," Fidell said. "I've long thought it's overdue for more scrutiny. Anything that sheds light will help allay concerns among the public and let people move onto more substantial matters."
He said he's concerned, though, about the amount of time the military has taken to try Manning.
