Taliban Prisoner Bergdahl Endured ‘Horrible’ Abuse

Bowe Bergdahl, who was charged in March with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy for allegedly leaving his post in southeastern Afghanistan in June 2009.

Bergdahl felt he needed to act immediately to address what he saw as a moral wrong, Major General Kenneth Dahl testified. Dahl said that while those beliefs were “naïve and unrealistic”, they were “sincerely held”. He testified on the second day of what is known in the military as an Article 32 hearing, the military’s equivalent of a grand jury hearing, except that it is public. He faces life in prison if convicted on the most serious charge of misbehaviour.

The hearing at Fort Sam Houston, at which Sgt Bergdahl did not testify, was held to determine whether there is enough evidence to have a military trial.

Fidell said Bergdahl never meant to avoid his duty and that his case should be treated like a one-day AWOL stint, which he said carries a penalty of 30 days’ confinement. Dahl said Begdahl’s five years of captivity with the Taliban were the worst a US prisoner of war has suffered in 60 years.

We now know through statements made by Bergdahl after his release and notes he wrote shortly 6 years ago, that he in fact walked off post on objective and in defiance of his command. But the charge of “misbehavior before the enemy”-meant for someone who “runs away” or “shamefully abandons” his unit that Fidell said, is “a grave abuse ” of the Army’s criminal code”.

Dahl testified that he thought Bergdahl was “very bright and well-read”.

In the final six months of Bergdahl’s captivity, the Taliban began preparing him for release, he said. Raised “at the edge of the grid”, home-schooled and denied normal social interactions, Bergdahl was “bright” and “well-read”, Dahl said, but introverted, with outsized expectations of himself and others.

Dahl said he didn’t “believe there is a jail sentence at the end of this process”. Terrence Russell, a military expert with the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, said that after one of Bergdahl’s many foiled escape attempts, he was blindfolded and placed in a seven-foot metal cage where he stayed for three years.

Bergdahl kept his head down and blinked often during Russell’s lengthy testimony. You can not overestimate how hard that is.

Prosecutors told the hearing Bergdahl snuck off in the middle of the night as part of a plan weeks in the making.

“I have nothing to say to him”, Senior Chief Petty Officer Hatch said on Herald Radio’s “Morning Meeting” yesterday. He said he would have recommended Bergdahl for specialist care.

While cross-examining witnesses called by the prosecution on Thursday, one of Bergdahl’s lawyers mentioned that Bergdahl had received a psychological discharge from the U.S. Coast Guard and that an Army psychiatric board had concluded that Bergdahl possessed a “severe mental defect”.