Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl arraigned on charges of desertion, endangering

Bergdahl, 29, appeared in a dress blue uniform with a light blue cord over his right shoulder signifying his service in the Army infantry.

“We’ve heard wildly different results and comments from people as high up as the national security adviser to President Obama, who said that Bowe Bergdahl had served with honor and distinction”, said Mark Sullivan, an attorney in Raleigh who is also a retired colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve.

His decision to voluntarily leave the base has raised questions about what happened that night, and eventually led to Bergdahl being formally charged with “desertion and misbehavior before the enemy” earlier this year.

Bergdahl, who was held by the Taliban for five years after he walked off a base, was arraigned during a short hearing on charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, a relatively rare charge that carries the severe punishment. Bergdahl has not spoken publicly since his release from the Taliban in May 2014 in a controversial exchange for the release of five senior-level Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Bergdahl’s case has gained renewed interest as the subject of the second season of the popular investigative journalism podcast Serial,. According to CNN, he barely spoke; his responses mostly consisted of a series of “Sir, yes, sir ” s. The next hearing is scheduled for January 12.

Instead, he said, Taliban fighters on motorcycles, armed with AK-47s, found him walking along a desert road and took him captive. It was left up in the air for several months if he would be tried in a misdemeanor court, but last week officials determined he would be tried in a general court-martial. You know, I could be, you know, what…

Fidell, who was not present at the arraignment, previously criticized the decision by Gen. Robert Abrams, commander of Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, to send his client to a general court-martial. “I was capable of being what I appeared to be”, Bergdahl said.

In this undated image provided by the U.S. Army, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl poses in front of an American flag. “Doing what I did is me saying that I am like…”