U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is bound to return to a military courtroom in North Carolina to face charges on his misconduct in the Army outpost in Afghanistan.
As reported by ABC News, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl appeared in court for a pre-trial hearing for his charges of desertion and misbehaviour before the enemy. The soldier walked into the courtroom wearing a blue uniform and sat up straight and quietly for the two and a half hour hearing. Bergdahl purportedly only opened his mouth to answer "yes" or "no" questions from the judge, Col. Jeffery Nance.
During the hearing, lawyers pushed forth the use of more than 300,000 pages of classified documents for the trial, adding that Bergdahl's side has already been denied access to thousands of pages of documents that can affect the preparation for the court-martial, as per Washington Post.
Prosecutors in turn stated that the files need to be filtered first to prevent unauthorized information from getting out. Moreover, the Prosecutor Capt. estimated how the amount of papers can relatively affect the case's schedule.
Berghdal's charge of desertion has a maximum five-year sentence attached to it and misbehavior before the enemy could lead to a life sentence if convicted. Bergdahl was captured in 2009 after disappearing from the Mest-Malak combat outpost in Paktika Province, and recovered in May 2014 during a prisoner swap for five detainees from Guantanamo Bay.
On his desertion, former platoonmates of Bergdahl is holding him accountable of six soldiers' deaths. Some soldiers stated that though he is not directly liable for their deaths, the six have died after Bergdahl vanished and they were at places they weren't supposed to be as every operation became a mission to find their lost colleague in one way or another, CNN reports.
As for Bergdahl, the soldier is able to relay his account of the story on what transpired during his captivity and duty in a podcast. Currently, Bergdahl's case has been pushed into the headlines of the podcast "Serial".
The court-martial hearing for Bergdahl's case is tentatively set this coming August.
