A judge has ordered the release of whistleblower Chelsea Manning, after she spent a year back behind bars. Manning, a former intelligence analyst, is best known for exposing US war crimes by leaking classified documents – and came out as transgender while serving a prison sentence in 2013. She was freed after having her sentence commuted by Barack Obama in 2016 – but jailed once again in March 2019, after being held in contempt of court for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury investigating WikiLeaks. After the activist spent a year imprisoned and refusing to testify, on Thursday a judge signed an order to free Manning – ruling that her testimony before the grand jury is no longer necessary.