It's been more than nine months since the U.S. Army arrested Pfc. Bradley Manning in Iraq, and we still know remarkably little.

We know that on March 2, the limited charges filed against him last year were expanded to include some two dozen violations of federal law and Army regulations including theft of public property and records, computer fraud, "wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the Internet, knowing that it was accessible to the enemy" and, most important, "aiding the enemy."

We know that Mr. Manning, 23, is confined at the Marine brig at Quantico, Va., as a maximum-security detainee under a "prevention of injury" watch. We know that this classification means he is alone in a cell for 23 hours of each day and isolated from other detainees, although technically he is not in solitary confinement.

In addition, we know that since March 2, he has been required to strip naked before going to sleep each night and present himself naked for inspection each morning before being allowed to dress.

And while Mr. Manning has been accused of crimes of the utmost gravity, we know he has not yet pleaded to the charges, not yet been tried on the charges and not yet been convicted of those charges or any others. His legal status is that of an innocent man.

As such, U.S. officials must complete as quickly as possible the current review of Mr. Manning's conditions of confinement as requested by his civilian lawyer, David E. Coombs. Mr. Coombs has challenged the detainment classification and accused brig officials of manufacturing false concerns about Mr. Manning's potential to harm himself to justify what amounts to punitive treatment.

The rest of what we know about Mr. Manning is secondhand at best, acquired via media reporting on his childhood and adolescence as a young gay man in Crescent, Okla. (population about 1,400), or through the contents of Internet communications released by people who claim that Mr. Manning wrote them.

Those appear to have provoked Mr. Manning's initial arrest and the investigation that produced the charges against him. But neither Mr. Manning nor his lawyer has addressed the issue.

These messages strongly suggest that Mr. Manning acquired a great deal of classified material as an Army intelligence analyst and provided it to the WikiLeaks Internet operation.

For the last year or so, WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, have been at the center of a worldwide controversy after Mr. Assange posted secret U.S. military videos and diplomatic cables on the WikiLeaks website and provided additional confidential material to several media organizations.

According to an Army press release, legal proceedings against Mr. Manning have been delayed pending the results of an inquiry into his "mental capacity and responsibility," which was requested by the defense. If the inquiry finds him competent, the next step would be the military equivalent of a grand jury hearing to determine if he should face a court martial on the charges.

In the meantime, the nature of Mr. Manning's confinement raises disturbing questions about whether he is being punished before guilt has been determined.

America's Uniform Code of Military Justice has been hailed, rightly, as a standard for the world. It leaves no room for the humiliation and degradation of detainees, no matter how serious the charges against them. Mr. Manning is entitled to the code's full protection.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH