Featured Image Credit: Alamy
Topics: Jeffrey Epstein, Military, US News, Crime
Daisy Phillipson
Chelsea Manning has claimed sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was 'murdered', citing her own experiences in the US prison system to support her theory.
The whistleblower was imprisoned for seven years after disclosing nearly 750,000 military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks, which she obtained while working for the US Army.
This week, the 34-year-old activist took to the H3 Podcast where she spoke in depth about her life, career and the whistleblowing.
Midway through, talk turns to Epstein, who was awaiting trial on child sex-trafficking charges when died in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Facility in New York in August 2019.
Advert
His death was ruled as suicide by hanging by the New York medical examiner. However, many theories have come to the fore since then, with some suggesting he may have been killed in order to prevent him from leaking names in relation to sex crime offences.
While this is still up for debate, Manning suggested that he was murdered, after being asked about her thoughts on the incident.
Without hesitation, she said: "Murder, that's how a prison murder happens, I know that stuff happens. Some of theses stories are in my book."
Noting the fact that the cameras outside of Epstein's cell were faulty at the time of his death, Manning said: "You wanna get rid of someone in prison? That's how you do it."
Speaking about her own experiences in prison, she said: "I just gotta' say, time and time again – the most violent people in the prison are the prison guards, every single time, just endless amounts of fear and anxiety of what a correctional guard of any variety was going to do.
"It haunts me to say, I don't associate the prison uniform with violence, but I see the CO uniform and it's different." Manning continued: "I would say that there's the rule of thirds.
"There are guards who care, they think they are doing a service and they try to be fair – it's a fast turnover rate.
"Then there are the guards who look the other way, treat it as a paycheck [...] Then there's the sadistic ones, the ones who play games and lie and cheat and steal, and get away with it [...] The other third who look the other way, don't do anything."
Manning is set to release a currently untitled memoir about her incredible life as a whistleblower and activist later this year.
If you have a story you want to tell, send it to UNILAD via [email protected]