Chelsea Manning was again behind bars last week after she was jailed for a second time for contempt of court, having refused to co-operate with a grand jury. According to a report in The Guardian, a defiant Manning told Judge Anthony Trenga in a federal district court in Virginia, that she would ‘rather starve to death’ than do what the state insisted and give testimony before the grand jury. Having already served 62 days in jail, 28 of which were spent in solitary confinement, she now faces up to 18 months more in custody. Trenga further tightened the screws on the former army private by adding a financial penalty. If Manning continues to refuse testimony and remains in jail after 30 days, she will be fined $500 for every subsequent day behind bars. If she reaches 60 days, the figure will be raised to $1 000 a day. The grand jury in front of which Manning has been ordered to appear is presumed to relate to the criminal prosecution of Julian Assange. Assange has been charged with conspiring with Manning to break into military computers to help her transmit a vast trove of US state secrets to the open information organisation in 2010.