Chelsea Manning risks return to jail in new court hearing

Former US military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning risked being sent back to jail Thursday after declaring she would not answer fresh questions from a grand jury believed investigating WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Manning, who spent seven years in military prisons for leaking US military and diplomatic secrets to WikiLeaks in 2010 and then two more months in an Alexandria, Virginia, jail this year on contempt of court charges, said she would not bow to the threat of another contempt sentence.

She accused the government of seeking to revive her original court martial case, saying prosecutors were unhappy over her 2017 pardon by president Barack Obama.

"No matter what happens today, whether I am placed in confinement or not, I'm not going to comply with this grand jury," she told journalists outside the Alexandria courthouse.

"The goal here is really to relitigate the court martial. They didn't like the outcome -- I got out."