Bergdahl to face court martial

In 2014, President Obama arranged a prisoner swap for his freedom in exchange for five Taliban detainees who were being held at Guantanamo Bay.

That claim likely contributed to Abrams’ decision to charge Bergdahl with “misbehavior before the enemy by Endangering the Safety of a Command, Unit or Place”, in addition to desertion.

The decision 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.

Eugene R. Fidell, Bergdahl’s civilian lawyer, said in a statement that Abrams, “did not follow the advice of the preliminary hearing officer who heard the witnesses”. This decision means Bergdahl could end up spending the rest of his life in prison.

And three days after the Rose Garden announcement, Obama compared his actions to those of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt: He said it didn’t matter how Bergdahl ended up with the Taliban – “We still get an American soldier back if he’s held in captivity”.

Colonel Bradley Poppen, Ph.D., Major General Joseph P. DiSalvo, and Colonel Ronald N. Wool deliver a press conference at the Fort Sam Houston Golf Course July 13, 2014 in San Antonio, Texas.

For a time, it looked as if Bergdahl’s case was just too ambiguous for the military to successfully prosecute before a general courts martial.

Separately, Fidell, a military justice expert who is also a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School, asked that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump “cease his prejudicial months-long campaign of defamation against our client”. That’s a far more serious penalty than had been recommended by the Army’s investigating officer, Lt. Gen. Kenneth Dahl, who testified at Bergdahl’s preliminary hearing in September that a jail sentence would be “inappropriate”. He realized he would face a “hurricane of wrath” from commanding officers, and deviated from his plan to find intelligence that he hoped would make the Army go easier on him, but got lost in some hills and captured by Taliban on motorcycles, he said.

Bergdahl disappeared June 30, 2009, from Combat Outpost Mest-Malak in Paktika Province, Afghanistan, and subsequently was captured.

The decision to swap detainees for Bergdahl drew condemnation from Republicans, who argued it would embolden the Taliban to kidnap other Americans.

Sgt. Bergdahl, meanwhile, was held by the Haqqani network, a group affiliated with the Taliban. He avoided public comment until last week, when he told the podcast Serial that he left his base to catch the attention of military commanders, and to alert them to what he said was “leadership failure” in his unit.

“Unfortunately in this instance, I’m very, very limited in what I can say about this ongoing matter”, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Monday. “Doing what I did was me saying I am like Jason Bourne”. He said he “was trying to prove to the world” that he was a top soldier.

“I want to see him serve time for what he did”, he said.

Bergdahl may also seek to have his case heard by a judge instead of a panel of military personnel, which would probably include members who were deployed in Afghanistan, he said. As we previously reported, the deal for Bergdahl’s release has been controversial because of the circumstances surrounding his disappearance.

“I think the politicisation of everything surrounding this case is very disturbing”, Fidell said.