FORT MEADE, Maryland - Bradley Manning, the US soldier who leaked classified Army materials to WikiLeaks - the biggest breach of classified data in the US history - was sentenced to 35 years imprisonment, on Wednesday.

The Judge, Army Col. Denise Lind, who convicted Bradley Manning of 22 charges including theft and espionage a month ago, sentenced the latter for being guilty of 20 charges pressed against him, with the most severe charge of aiding the enemy, acquitted, for 35 years; prosecutors believed that he deserved 60 years, for the young man was a very "determined insider" in leaking pertinent data on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The 25-year-old soldier will be discharged automatically from the military; his rank reduced to private first class, and his pay forfeited indefinitely. Despite all these, Manning would be later on qualified for parole once he has served at least one-third of his sentence.

On the other hand, Bradley Manning's lawyer opined that he can simply be rehabilitated and not put behind bars.

"There may not be a soldier in the history of the Army who displayed such an extreme disregard" for his mission, Capt. Joe Morrow, the prosecutor, said on Monday, adding that the young soldier displayed a different level of arrogance by acknowledging that he alone is intelligent enough to identify and classify military data.

In 2010, Bradley Manning leaked over 700,000 classified military data and videos to WikiLeaks, a pro-transparency website, which caught the public's attention. He was working in Baghdad as a low-level intelligence analyst during that time, which gave him the opportunity to hand over the files to WikiLeaks.

One of the most striking leaks was a classified gunshot video - labeled as "Collateral Murder" by the site. The video captured the incident when a US Apache helicopter targeted alleged insurgents in Baghdad in 2007. The incident took away many lives including those of the two Reuters news staff.

Manning's case emphasized the difficulty in hiding classified information from the internet. Not only did the leak risk the lives of the American citizens it also sparked a clash between the US government and the anti-secrecy advocates, who continue to justify the young soldier's motive.