The US soldier accused of leaking a trove of secret government documents later published by the Wikileaks website is to be moved to a military prison in Kansas, officials have said.
Pte First Class Bradley Manning has been held pending court martial at a Marine Corps base in Virginia.His transfer comes amid international criticism of his treatment.
His supporters say he has been confined to a cell for 23 hours a day and forced regularly to undress.
At a press conference at the Pentagon on Tuesday, defence department general counsel Jeh Johnson said he would be moved to a new pre-trial jail at Fort Leavenworth, in the state of Kansas, imminently.
Mr Johnson said the transfer should not be interpreted as a criticism of Pte Manning's treatment at the Marine base in Quantico.
Officials have denied Pte Manning has been mistreated, though last month a top US state department official, spokesman PJ Crowley, resigned after saying the military's treatment of the Wikileaks suspect was "ridiculous and counterproductive".
Pte Manning, an intelligence analyst who joined the US Army in 2007, is suspected of leaking 720,000 diplomatic and military documents, including a database of military records from the Iraq war, Afghan war records, classified diplomatic cables and other materials.
In the past year, Wikileaks has published troves of documents it titled the Iraq War Logs, the Afghan War Diary, and reams of secret US state department cables spanning five decades.
Pte Manning has been charged with using unauthorised software on government computers to download classified information and to make intelligence available to "the enemy", and other counts related to leaking intelligence and theft of public records.
@'BBC'
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