A close friend and colleague of Chelsea Manning said on Monday that the former military whistleblower was safe after a photo of her on the edge on a window ledge was posted on her Twitter account, The Associated Press reported.
The photo was posted on Manning’s twitter account on Sunday with the caption “I’m sorry” and came shortly after another tweet that read “im not really cut out for this world,” the AP reported.
The tweets were deleted a few minutes after with a message that noted Manning was safe and needed some space.
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Manning — a convicted government leaker who is mounting a long shot campaign to be senator of Maryland — is not suspending her campaign, according to her friend and communications director for her Senate bid, Kelly Wright.
Wright told the AP that Manning’s adjustment to life outside of prison has been “extremely difficult.”
“I have seen firsthand and up close the violence inflicted on her by years of imprisonment, solitary confinement and torture,” Wright said. “This is made worse by the impossibly high expectations our society sets for public figures, especially on social media.”
Manning tried to kill herself twice while in military prison after sending more than 700,000 military and State Department documents to WikiLeaks in 2010, and has said she felt like a “cult of personality” after she was freed.
She told the AP in a recent interview that she often wakes up in a panic that she’s back in prison. Manning spent lengthy stays in solitary confinement and, at the Marine base at Quantico, Va., she was reportedly found to have been subjected to degrading treatment.
President Obama commuted Manning’s 35-year sentence — the longest ever for a leaker — in the final days of his term.