WASHINGTON, January 18./TASS/. Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has thanked US President Obama for the decision to commute the sentence of Bradley (Chelsea) Manning, jailed for leaking data to WikiLeaks.

On Tuesday, the press service of the White House said the US president commuted the sentence of Manning, 29, who will walk free on May 17.

Manning, a former intelligence analyst, was arrested in Kuwait in May 2010.

Initially Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for passing hundreds of thousands of classified military documents to WikiLeaks. After being sentenced, the leaker, formerly named Bradley, said he wanted to live as a woman, and took the name Chelsea. The authorities approved hormone therapy.

Manning appealed to President Barack Obama for mitigation of the sentence in November 2016. The sentence was passed on August 21, 2013.