Chelsea Manning's attorneys confirm she attempted suicide last week

Attorneys for Chelsea Manning, the U.S. soldier serving a 35-year sentence at the military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, for sending thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks, confirmed Monday that she was hospitalized last week after attempting suicide.

"She knows that people have questions about how she is doing and she wants everyone to know that she remains under close observation by the prison and expects to remain on this status for the next several weeks," her attorneys said in a statement. News of her suicide attempt was leaked without her permission, the attorneys continued, and she would have "preferred to keep her private medical information private, and instead focus on her recovery, [but] the government's gross breach of confidentiality in disclosing her personal health information to the media has created the very real concern that they may continue their unauthorized release of information about her publicly without warning."

In May, Manning filed an appeal over her "unprecedented" and "grossly unfair" sentence, and has been involved in an ongoing legal battle over being able to live according to her gender identification as opposed to the gender she was assigned at birth. Manning is transgender, and The Guardian reports that while she has access to hormones and cosmetics, she is in a male military prison and has to wear her hair short, per male military standards.

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