A newly published court filing details the harsh treatment faced by alleged U.S. Army whistleblower Bradley Manning while he was imprisoned at the U.S. Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, for about nine months in 2010 and 2011. Manning is accused of leaking a trove of documents to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, but his defense team argued in a motion late last month that all charges should be dismissed due to Manning’s “unlawful pretrial punishment.” According to the filing, Manning was kept in a six-by-eight-foot cell for 23 to 24 hours a day and banned from lying down or even leaning against the wall when he was not sleeping. The filing says Manning was woken up at 5 a.m. and forced to remain awake until 10 p.m. Lawyers accuse the officers at Quantico of using Manning’s mental health as an excuse to keep him in “the functional equivalent of solitary confinement,” despite multiple objections by psychiatrists. Guards reportedly checked on Manning every five minutes and woke him up at night if they could not see him clearly. He was required to eat all his meals alone with only a spoon, made to sleep with a tear-proof security blanket that irritated his skin, and forced to request toilet paper every time he wanted to use the bathroom. In addition, the complaint alleges Manning was not allowed to have any personal items or to exercise in his cell. If Manning’s treatment is found by a judge to have been illegal, he could theoretically receive credit on the amount of time served in custody or even see his charges dismissed outright.