The United States military has denied mistreating  the army private suspected of leaking of thousands of classified US documents to the WikiLeaks.

Bradley Manning, the suspect has been held in solitary confinement at a US Marine prison near Washington since July after being charged with eight counts under federal law, including transmitting classified information to a third party, and two counts under military law.

But Colonel Dave Lapan, a US defence department spokesman, said on Friday that Manning has the same privileges as all other prisoners held in what the military calls “maximum custody”.

He said Manning is in a standard single-person cell and gets exercise, recreation, access to newspapers and visitors.

Lapan described as “blatantly false” the accusations of mistreatment which have appeared in the US media in recent days.