That’s the thing: it doesn’t need to be “absolutely certain” to be sufficient risk to effectively bar him from ever re-entering (or even venturing too far out of the current protection detail that keeps him alive).

Even “pretty likely to be assassinated upon entry” would be enough to keep most reasonable or prudent people away forever.

Solitary confinement for extended periods of time causes permanent, physical damage to the human brain and psyche. If you have no experience with it or those who have so suffered, I don’t think you have even a remote shred of justification or qualification to speak of it the way that you have.

As I have personally witnessed the intense, permanent damage caused by such things, I entirely refuse to engage with your casual dismissal, which is extraordinarily offensive to me.

You seemed pretty sure. But ok if he’s “pretty likely to murdered ”, then you must have some numbers to back that up? How many leakers have been murdered, and how many haven’t?

What was the probability that Chelsea Manning was going to be murdered? And how was it calculated?

edit in response to your edit which included this:

>As I have personally witnessed the intense, permanent damage caused by such things, I entirely refuse to engage with your casual dismissal, which is extraordinarily offensive to me.

So you're just going to toss out unsubstantiated claims and then retreat under the pretense of being extraordinary offended?

Torture has a generally accepted meaning and most people (and our legal system) don’t think that a single occupancy prison cell with an hour of human contact per day fits that meaning. The studies supporting psychological damage are generally talking about months of near total isolation, which is not what Chelsea Manning experienced.

1. There is a difference between complete deprivation of human contact for months to years (which could be a form of torture) and spending 23 hours a day in a single occupancy cell with an hour outside for exercise with guards and healthcare workers regularly attempting to engage you in conversation (in an attempt to evaluate your mental state). Chelsea Manning's guard's stated they tried to engage her in conversation regularly, but she wasn't responsive. That doesn't sound like purposeful lack of human contact for the purposes of psychological torture.

2. The U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture is a lawyer in a political position, not a psychiatrist.

3. The studies linked in his report and the article failed were horribly flawed. They examined general population prisoners and prisoners subjected to solitary confinement without taking into account the selection biases that lead to differences between those populations, i.e., prisoners who have behavioral problems are more likely to be selected for solitary confinement.

I think that charging prisoners exorbitant fees to call their family is horrible. I think that not allowing books on programming in prison because the warden is concerned with "hacking" is wrong. Hell I think giving prisoners beds that are less comfortable than what you'd expect guards to sleep on is terrible.

But I don't think those things should be described as torture because they diminish the meaning of the word.