The often outspoken (when not completely silent) and renowned comics creator Alan Moore has released a statement in support of the alleged Wikileaks whistle-blower PFC Bradley Manning, a U.S. Army intelligence analyst who has been held in solitary confinement for over a year without trial. Manning is accused giving the international data dumping organization Wikileaks access to restricted material including the so-called Iraq & Afghanistan War Logs that called U.S. military actions in the Middle East into question, as well as U.S. Embassy cables that revealed the sometimes embarrassing reports of diplomatic officials.

Moore's comments come just days after ComicsAlliance interviewed his fellow V for Vendetta creator David Lloyd, who, like Moore, said he was pleased with Wikileaks supporters and hacktivist group Anonymous using their graphic novel character, V, as a icon for their movement against governments they see as restricting online information.

As the co-author of V for Vendetta, a seminal graphic novel whose influence is obvious in the activities of Wikileaks and other "hacktivist" groups, Moore is dismayed by Manning's predicament and what he believes it represents. In a statement released by the Bradley Manning Support Network, Moore was quoted as saying:

"With any legitimate trial of whistleblower Bradley Manning still being at an unspecified date in the future, it would seem that what is presently on trial here is Western culture itself. When the persecution of an individual who has exposed an evil is pursued so ruthlessly and yet the evil itself is studiedly ignored, all of us know that there is something very wrong with the way that our society is conducting itself. And if we do not protest in the strongest terms about what is being done in our name, then we become complicit.

There is no third option. Bradley Manning and others like him everywhere are vital to our continued moral health and well-being as a people, and unless we offer them our full support in their often dire and isolated circumstances, it is we, as a people, who will end up the losers."

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