President Donald Trump has intervened in the case of a Navy SEAL accused of murdering an Islamic State prisoner in 2017, ensuring that the 19-year military veteran is moved to “less restrictive confinement” while he awaits trial.
A war hero’s plight
Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher has been detained at the Naval Consolidated Brig Miramar since Sept. 11. The decorated veteran has reportedly been denied basic legal and medical services, while being housed with military criminals who have already been convicted.
Denouncing these “abhorrent” conditions, a group of 40 House Republicans drafted a letter asking Navy Rear Adm. Yancy B. Lindsey to “reevaluate the decision to place Chief Gallagher in pre-trial confinement and analyze whether a less severe form of restraint would be appropriate as his trial approaches.” The Navy SEAL’s congressional advocates have called him a “decorated warfighter” who deserves “the presumption of innocence while awaiting court-martial.”
“We have received reports that Chief Gallagher’s access to counsel and access to food and medical care may have been restricted,” the letter states, adding, “Chief Gallagher and other pretrial service members are intermingled with convicts who have been tried at court-martial, found guilty and sentenced to confinement.”
Executive decision
Trump also spoke out in defense of Gallagher, who is also accused of firing sniper rounds at innocent Iraqi civilians. Hours after announcing that Gallagher would be transferred “in honor of his past service to our Country,” Gallagher’s attorney confirmed that his client was moved to a barracks somewhere on Miramar.
Gallagher is accused of killing a 15-year-old Islamic State fighter who was in his care after being wounded in combat outside Mosul, Iraq. During a military hearing investigating the terrorist’s death, a fellow medic testified that Gallagher “walked up without saying anything at all” and started stabbing the boy.
After the alleged murder, prosecutors claim that Gallagher posed with the boy’s body during his re-enlistment ceremony. He has also been charged with shooting two civilians in Iraq and firing indiscriminately into crowds.
Gallagher has deployed to combat eight times, and has been awarded the Bronze Star with Valor twice, in addition to receiving a trio of Navy and Marine Corps Achievement medals. Witnesses recall hearing the Navy chief admit that he has killed more than 200 enemy combatants during his multiple tours of duty.
A welcome change in approach
Trump’s intervention in matters of military justice could not be in starker contrast with the actions of his predecessor in the Oval Office. President Barack Obama infamously exchanged five terrorist detainees for Army Sgt. Beau Bergdahl in 2014. Bergdahl was captured in Afghanistan by the Taliban five years earlier after he willingly deserted his combat outpost, resulting in a weeks-long search and rescue mission that cost American lives.
One of those freed Taliban insurgents, Mohammed Fazl, ordered the deaths of thousands of minority Afghan Shiites in 2000 while he served as army chief for the radical Islamist group. Another, Khairullah Khairkhwa, was close to slain Al-Qaeda mass murderer Osama Bin Laden and Taliban founder Mullah Omar.
Before leaving office in 2017, Obama commuted the 35-year sentence that transgender Army Private Chelsea (Bradley) Manning received for recklessly publishing thousands of secret military and diplomatic documents. Manning endangered the lives of thousands of military service members deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and was rewarded with government-paid hormone therapy while incarcerated at Fort Leavenworth, paving the way for the leaker’s eventual gender reassignment surgery in 2018.
Trump’s action has been applauded by military service members, members of Congress, and Gallagher’s family. “As a wife and mother I want to personally thank President Trump for having mercy on my husband and our family by exercising not only compassion but common sense in this shameful travesty of justice we have faced for over 7 months,” said Gallagher’s wife, Andrea, after learning that her husband was moved.
“My husband, children, myself and our family have suffered needlessly for so long and this is a joyous moment in an otherwise very horrific nightmare.”
No comments: