Shahid Buttar kicks a rhyme at the FBI headquarters on MLK Day 2011

Shahid Buttar was among dozens of protesters that rallied outside the J. Edgar Hoover F.B.I. building on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Washington D.C.. The rally was called "Protest the Criminalization of Dissent!" Participants included FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley who flew in from Minneapolis and retired CIA officer Ray McGovern. After short speeches by defenders of the First Amendment, protesters joined a caravan to Marine Corps Base Quantico where military authorities have been holding Bradley Manning for eight months in solitary confinement. Civil libertarians have described the conditions of Manning's detainment as inhumane and unlawful, particularly in view of the fact Manning has not been convicted. The new United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan E. Mendez, has submitted a formal inquiry to the United States Department of State about Manning's treatment.

On July 5, 2010 Manning was charged under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for transferring classified data onto his personal computer and communicating national defense information to an unauthorized source. Chat logs disclosed by Adrian Lamo, a former hacker and convicted criminal who has recently received psychiatric treatment, suggest that Bradley Manning had admitted to being the "leaker" of a Baghdad airstrike video and 260,000 diplomatic cables which were obtained by WikiLeaks.

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