The trial was originally scheduled for August but was delayed until February to provide time to resolve disputes over the defense’s access to classified documents, according to The Associated Press.
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Nance announced that the trial would be pushed back at a pre-trial hearing held Tuesday in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The Army agreed and made a decision to court-martial Bergdahl on charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. He was held and tortured for five years by Haqqani Network militants before he was released to American special operations forces in May 2014 after the White House approved the controversial release of five senior-level Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to Qatar.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has previously called Bergdahl a “traitor who should have been executed”. He disappeared from Combat Outpost Mest-Malak in Paktika Province, Afghanistan on June 20, 2009.After departing, the soldier was quickly captured by militants from the feared Haqqani faction, a Taliban-lined outfit blamed for many deadly attacks on United States soldiers.
Court documents released in March revealed that an Army sanity board concluded in 2015 that Bergdahl was suffering from a psychiatric disorder when he left his post.
Bergdahl sat attentively today in his dress blue formal uniform, his infantry cord looped under the epaulet on his right shoulder, during the brief hearing. A preliminary hearing officer recommended against a bad-conduct discharge, but noted that no definitive conclusion has been made yet on the question of casualties.
“We will fight them in the courts, we’ll fight them in the ballot box, and we’ll put our bodies on the line to oppose one of the most underhanded, devious and unconstitutional pieces of discriminatory legislation ever passed in North Carolina history”, said Vicki Ryder, a member of the activist organization Raging Grannies.
Bergdahl’s defense lawyers contend that the Army lawyer’s advice to Abrams was so incomplete that it misled the four-star general.
“Given the many incendiary comments that have been broadcast and otherwise disseminated about Sgt. Bergdahl, his immediate commander at Fort Sam Houston has taken measures to ensure his physical safety when leaving the installation”, his attorneys wrote in February. But as a group of soldiers, battle buddies, we all look out for each other, Sgt. Maj.
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Bergdahl is now working a desk job at Fort Sam Houston, where his commander has “taken measures to ensure his physical safety when leaving the installation” due to threats against his person, according to his attorneys. “Paperwork, moving stuff from place to place, things like that”. Please see our terms of service for more information.
