Hailey man faces possible court martial
BY Dana DuGan
O
riginally scheduled to begin in February, the court-martial trial of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, of Hailey, has been set for next spring. The trial will begin, in Fort Bragg, N.C., on April 18, 2017.
The Taliban captured Bergdahl on June 30, 2009, after he left his base at the Outpost Mest Malak in Afghanistan’s Paktika province. Bergdahl has maintained that he was attempting to run 19 miles to another base to report what he believed to be poor leadership in his unit.
Bergdahl was held and tortured from June 2009 in various hideouts in Pakistan’s rugged tribal belt for the next five years by the Haqqani network, a paramilitary group fighting against U.S.-led NATO forces and the government of Afghanistan and its national army. He was released in May 2014 in a prisoner swap with five Taliban leaders held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Still on active duty, Bergdahl now serves in a clerical position at Joint Base San Antonio, in Texas.
Colonel Jeffery R. Nance, an Army military judge, is presiding over the pretrial hearings, which have been ongoing since December 2015. In one of the motions, the defense said the case is “among the most politically charged courts-martial in Army history.”
And, according to a motion dated June 30: “Army officials have treated this case differently from those of other similarly situated accused soldiers.”
A significant pretrial hearing was held at Fort Bragg, Monday and Tuesday, Nov. 14 and 15, in which a two-part pretrial request filed Sept. 1 was considered.
The first part of the motion was a request for the admittance of evidence regarding harm to soldiers on July 8, 2009, while on a mission to find Bergdahl, more than a week after he was captured. Nance said that the risk of looking at the merits and failure of that mission could create a trial within a trial.
According to case documents, the defense argues that there are aspects to the mission that suggest lack of planning may have played a role in the security breakdown and soldiers being harmed. Nance will decide in the days ahead on whether to admit evidence of injuries from that mission. The defense argues that the poor planning on that mission is not relevant to the specific charges Bergdahl faces: desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. According to case documents, if not used in the trial, the evidence would most likely reappear in the sentencing phase.
The second issue at the hearing was the government’s burden of proof and evidentiary discovery.
The main cause for the delay for the trial has consistently been about this discovery process. However, much of the prosecution’s evidence is classified and the various federal agencies involved––the Pentagon, the C.I.A., the State Department––have so far been slow to comply with the judge’s orders to work with the prosecution and defense teams. Discovery helps a party find out the other side’s version of the facts, what witnesses know, and other evidence.
Two more motions sessions are scheduled for Dec. 1 and 16, at Fort Bragg.