Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl has been recommended for trial by general court-martial, the Army announced Monday.
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It is unclear if his Serial comments helped lead to the decision, but on Monday, the U.S. Army announced that it is recommending that Bergdahl be court-martialed on the charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, and abandoning his post before he was captured.
Bergdahl was released on May 31, 2014, in a controversial swap for five former Taliban leaders who had been held at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay. Bergdahl was a Taliban prisoner for more than four years before being released in exchange for the release of five Taliban detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay. We again ask that Donald Trump cease his prejudicial months-long campaign of defamation against our client. Desertion can carry a death penalty, but Army officials have said that will not occur in Bergdahl’s case.
It comes after Bergdahl broke his silence last week by participating in the popular podcast Serial in which the soldier’s recorded conversations with film producer Mark Boal were aired with Bergdahl’s approval.
Bergdahl says in the interviews that he walked off his base to cause a crisis that would catch the attention of military brass.
The hearing is expected to take place at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where FORSCOM has its headquarters.
Bergdahl will also face a charge of misbehaviour before the enemy. If convicted by a panel of his military peers, Bergdahl faces the possibility of life in prison; he can also request a bench trial. And Sen. John McCain, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, told the Boston Herald in October he would hold a hearing if Bergdahl eludes prison time.
In September, the military officer who headed the investigation into Bergdahl’s disappearance and capture, said he believed the American soldier was unrealistically idealistic, but not a Taliban sympathiser. Congressional Republicans, as well as Donald Trump, now a presidential candidate, criticized Bergdahl as a traitor, and accused the Obama administration of breaking the law by notifying members of the prisoner swap less than three hours in advance. He said he “was trying to prove to the world” that he was a top soldier and that in some sense he even wanted to emulate someone like Jason Bourne, the spy-movie character.
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“The desertion charge is pretty straightforward”, writes the Serial team, but they add that the “misbehavior” charge is “rarely used, but the military can bring it when they want to accuse someone of putting his or her fellow troops in danger”.
