Private First Class Bowe Bergdahl left his base near the town of Yahya Khel, Paktika province, in June 2009. He was captured and spent nearly five years in captivity. He says that after escape attempts, he was held blindfolded and chained to a bed for three months, and locked in a dark cage for very long periods, and beaten.
He was released in a negotiated prisoner exchange in May 2014. In March 2015, he was charged by the United States Army with one count of desertion, and one count of misbehavior before the enemy.
In October, the presiding officer in his military hearing recommended that he not serve any jail time.
But General Robert B. Abrams, head of Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, has now ordered that Bergdahl face a full court martial, with a possibility of a life sentence.
A top Army commander on Monday ordered that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl face a court-martial on charges of desertion and endangering troops stemming from his decision to leave his outpost in 2009, prompting a huge manhunt in the wilds of eastern Afghanistan and landing him in nearly five years of harsh Taliban captivity.
The decision by Gen. Robert B. Abrams, head of Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., means that Sergeant Bergdahl, 29, faces a possible life sentence, a far more serious penalty than had been recommended by the Army’s own investigating officer, who had testified that a jail sentence would be “inappropriate.
Bowe Bergdahl to Face Court-Martial on Desertion Charges, Richard A. Oppel, New York Times
An arraignment hearing will be held at a later date at Fort Bragg, Army officials said. Bergdahl is currently assigned to Joint Base San Antonio, Tex., with a desk job.
General court martial is the highest level of court martial. If convicted Bergdahl could face life in prison, or, if deemed appropriate by the court martial, be sentenced to death.
Bergdahl’s attorney, Eugene Fidell, said in a statement Monday that Abrams “did not follow the advice of the preliminary hearing officer,” Visger, who heard testimony from witnesses in September. Bergdahl’s defense team “had hoped the case would not go in this direction,” Fidell said.
Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl to face most serious kind of court-martial in Army desertion case, Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Dan Lamothe, Washington Post
The second season of the “Serial” podcast is about Bowe Bergdahl. The first episode can be heard here.
The first season of “Serial”—about the 1999 murder of a Baltimore teen, Hae Min Lee, and the conviction of her ex-boyfriend Adnan Syed for the crime—asked a specific question: Did he do it? That question raised broader questions about reasonable doubt, about memory and truth, about the U.S. system of justice. The second season does something different. The basic facts in the case of Bergdahl are known, and most parties involved agree on what they are. But what those facts mean, what Bergdahl actually experienced in the Army, his motivations for leaving his platoon, and the many terrible consequences of that decision are more complex, even existential.
“Serial” Season Two Is Here, Sarah Larson, New Yorker