Bowe Bergdahl Arraigned Sans Plea on Desertion, Misbehavior

Upon arraignment before a military court, US Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who allegedly fled his unit in Afghanistan before being held captive by the Taliban, did not enter a plea in the face of charges including desertion and misbehavior before the enemy.

Bergdahl’s attorney Eugene Fidell said he welcomes the court martial, which will allow for more of the case to be made public.

The disgraced soldier wore an Army dress uniform with a dark blue jacket and trousers and had closely cropped hair. He mostly sat still in his chair and walked with his head down as he left the courtroom.

The judge in the case, Colonel Christopher Fredrikson, scheduled a January 12 pre-trial hearing to discuss motions.

Bergdahl was the soldier who walked away from his post in Afghanistan back in 2009 and was subsequently captured by the Taliban. 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.

The hearing lasted 15 minutes, and Bergdahl, who was represented by a military lawyer, asked to be represented by civilian counsel in future appearances.

For a time, it looked as if Bergdahl’s case was just too ambiguous for the military to successfully prosecute in such a venue: In October, Bergdahl’s legal team said that the military officer in charge of a preliminary hearing in the case recommended his case be concluded without jail time or a punitive discharge from the military.

Bergdahl stands charged with one count of desertion with intent to shirk important or hazardous duty, aka Article 85, and one count of misbehavior before the enemy by endangering the safety of a command, unit or place, aka Article 99. Fidell, Bergdahl’s attorney, has said his client is being charged twice for the same action.

Bergdahl hasn’t talked publicly about what happened, but over the past several months, he spoke extensively with screenwriter Mark Boal, who shared about 25 hours of the recorded interviews with Sarah Koenig for her popular podcast, “Serial”. “You know, that I could be what it is that all those guys out there that go to the movies and watch those movies – they all want to be that – but I wanted to prove I was that”.

The way Bergdahl tells it, he was deeply concerned about the leadership in his brigade, to the point he says he believed his comrades’ lives were at risk. “I was capable of being what I appeared to be”, Bergdahl said.