Chelsea Manning, the former US Army soldier who was jailed for passing thousands of government documents to WikiLeaks exposing American military abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan, has filed to run for the US Senate seat in Maryland, RT reports.
Manning, who had her 35-year sentence commuted by former President Barack Obama in May last year, declared her intention to run with the Federal Election Commission on January 5. She will run as a Democrat.
The 30-year-old Oklahoma native faces a tough primary battle against incumbent Democrat Ben Cardin, the senior senator from Maryland who has held the seat since 2007. Cardin has an approval rate of 50 percent, according to the latest figures cited by the Baltimore Sun, and will face Manning and three other candidates in the upcoming primary.
Manning was arrested in 2010 after an internal US Army investigation found she had leaked more than 700,000 sensitive documents and videos to news outlets across the world, including WikiLeaks. She was released from military prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas last year.