Bradley Manning to request pardon from Obama over 35-year jail sentence

Manning says 'It's OK – I'm going to get through this' after military judge hands down stiff penalty for WikiLeaks disclosures

Bradley Manning will send a personal plea to Barack Obama next week for a presidential pardon after he was sentenced on Wednesday to 35 years in prison for passing hundreds of thousands of classified military documents to WikiLeaks.

The sentence was more severe than many observers expected, and is much longer than any punishment given to previous US government officials who have leaked information to the media.

Manning showed no emotion, neither when the sentence was delivered, nor after being escorted into a side room, where his lawyers and members of his family were waiting, some of them in tears.

"Everyone in his defence team was emotional, including myself," his lawyer, David Coombs, told the Guardian. "The only person that wasn't emotional was Brad. He looked to us and said: 'It's OK. I'm going to move forward and I'm going to be all right'."

Coombs told a press conference that next week he will formally submit the request for a pardon, "or at the very least commute his sentence to time served". That request will contain a personal appeal from Manning to Obama, which his lawyer read out.

"When I chose to disclose classified information, I did so out of a love to my country and a sense of duty to others," Manning will tell Obama. "If you deny my request for a pardon, I will serve my time knowing that sometimes you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society."

Coombs said the military's decision to seek a charge of aiding enemy – which ultimately failed – was placed amid a "government-wide crackdown" on journalists and whistleblowers that should alarm those who care about a free press.

"The case of the United States v Bradley Manning is a watershed movement in history for the freedom of the press," he said.

The 25-year-old soldier was convicted last month of leaking more than 700,000 classified documents and video. The disclosures amounted to the biggest leak in US military history.

He was found guilty of 20 counts, six of them under the Espionage Act, but was acquitted of the most serious charge of "aiding the enemy".

A protracted legal process that started in May 2010, when Manning was arrested while stationed in Iraq, was over in less than two minutes on Wednesday morning.

The military judge presiding over the court martial, Colonel Denise Lind, walked into the courtroom at Fort Meade military base at 10.15am, dealt with some court admin, asked Manning to stand, then told him he was sentenced to 35 years.

Speaking a clipped tone, Lind told the soldier he would be reduced in rank to the lowest grade of army private, see his pay and allowance forfeited, be dishonourably discharged from the military and "confined for 35 years".

He will now be transferred to military custody in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Amid some confusion over the military rules for parole, his legal team said that taking into account the time he has already served, he will be eligible for parole in around seven years. He has to serve a minimum of a third of his sentence, and at the very earliest, could be released under parole soon as 2021.

A total of 1,294 days – more than three years – are automatically deducted from Manning's sentence.

That includes the time already spent in military custody since May 2010, plus 112 days that is being taken off the sentence as part of a pre-trial ruling in which Lind compensated Manning for the excessively harsh treatment he endured at the Quantico marine base in Virginia.

He can earn 120 days per year off his sentence for good behaviour and job performance.