Chelsea Manning shares first picture of herself since release

By Angela Moon
Chelsea Manning, the transgender U.S. Army soldier responsible for a massive leak of classified material, poses in a photo of herself for the first time since she was released from prison and post to social media on May 18, 2017. Chelsea Manning/CC BY-SA/Handout via REUTERS

By Angela Moon

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Chelsea Manning, the transgender U.S. Army soldier responsible for a massive leak of classified material, shared a photo of herself for the first time since she was released from prison.

The portrait, which Manning shared on her Twitter and Instagram accounts @xychelsea87, shows the 29-year old in a short-cropped hair wearing red lipstick and a dark deep-V-neck sweater. She included the caption: "Okay, so here I am everyone!! #HelloWorld"

Manning was released from a U.S. military prison on Wednesday, seven years after being arrested for passing secrets to WikiLeaks in the largest breach of classified information in U.S. history.

Manning was convicted by court-martial in 2013 of espionage and other offenses for furnishing more than 700,000 documents, videos, diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts to WikiLeaks, an international organization that publishes such information from anonymous sources, while she was an intelligence analyst in Iraq.

Many on social media congratulated Manning's newfound freedom, with her post receiving 33,000 likes and 7,600 retweets on Thursday.

(Reporting by Angela Moon; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)