

Iceland's parliament building. Source: Wikipedia

On Saturday, Icelandic member of parliament Birgitta Jónsdóttir posted a nomination letter on her blog on behalf of the three-member parliamentary group The Movement, proposing suspected WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning as a candidate for the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize. Nobel Peace Prize nominations can be submitted by any member of a national assembly, among others.

The Icelandic parliamentarian has been a vocal supporter of WikiLeaks since it leaked the Collateral Murder video of a 2007 Baghdad strike by U.S. forces that killed at least a dozen unarmed civilians, including two Reuters reporters, which is widely believed to have been acquired and sent to WikiLeaks by Manning himself. In December 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a subpoena request to Twitter for data pertaining to prominent WikiLeaks figures, including Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and Birgitta Jónsdóttir.

Jónsdóttir has also been an advocate for making Iceland a haven of press freedom, and in 2010 spearheaded the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, which combined, according to the New York Times, whistle-blower laws and rules about Internet providers from the United States; source protection laws from Belgium; freedom of information laws from Estonia and Scotland, among others; and New York State's law to counteract 'libel tourism,' the practice of suing in courts, like Britain's, where journalists have the hardest time prevailing.

The full text of the Manning nomination is reprinted below: