Bowe Bergdahl has whined that the US treated him worse than his Taliban captors in a newly released interview, as he faces up to life in prison for desertion.
‘At least the Taliban were honest enough to say, “I’m the guy who’s gonna cut your throat”,’ the 31-year-old Army sergeant told the The Sunday Times of London in an interview released on Sunday.
‘Here, it could be the guy I pass in the corridor who’s going to sign the paper that sends me away for life,’ the Army deserter griped in the interview, which was recorded last year and is his first video interview since returning to the US.
‘We may as well go back to kangaroo courts and lynch mobs.’
Bergdahl on Monday pleaded guilty to abandoning his post in Afghanistan in 2009, under circumstances that have never been fully explained.
Army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl (center) is seen outside a military courthouse at Fort Bragg on Monday after pleading guilty to desertion.
Bowe Bergdahl is seen above in his first video interview since being released by the Taliban. A clip of the interview with the Sunday Times was released earlier this week by ABC
Bergdahl has previously claimed he left his post so that he could report his ‘unfit’ platoon commander to senior officers, in taped conversations which aired on the podcast Serial.
The Taliban captured Bergdahl after he went AWOL and held him captive for five years, before President Obama secured his release in exchange for five Taliban prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in 2014.
Bergdahl’s attorney’s argued this week that President Donald Trump’s criticism of him has tainted the case and prevented him from receiving a fair sentence.
Lawyers for Bergdahl cited a news conference this week in which Trump indicated he stands by his campaign-trail criticism of Bergdahl. They asked to have the case dismissed.
While running for president, Trump called Bergdahl a ‘dirty, rotten traitor’ and suggested harsh punishments.
‘President Trump stands at the pinnacle of an unbroken chain of command that includes key participants in the remaining critical steps of the case,’ the defense wrote.
On Friday, the White House responded in a statement that did not mention Bergdahl by name but appeared to address questions related to his case.
Bergdahl is seen on Monday at Fort Bragg. He has argued that President Donald Trump’s criticism of him has tainted the case and prevented him from receiving a fair sentence
Bergdahl abandoned his post in Afghanistan in 2009. His motives for doing so remain unclear
‘There are no expected or required dispositions, outcomes, or sentences in any military justice case, other than those resulting from the individual facts and merits of a case,’ the statement said.
It added, ‘Each military justice case must be resolved on its own facts.’
Earlier in the week, ABC News aired a portion of the Sunday Times interview with Bergdahl – his first televised interview since returning to the US.
In the interview, which was filmed last year by British filmmaker Sean Langan, Bergdahl said it was ‘insulting’ that he’s been portrayed as a traitor.
‘You know, it’s just insulting frankly,’ Bergdahl said. ‘It’s very insulting, the idea that they would think I did that.’
Bergdahl is seen above being released in 2014, after five years of imprisonment
Bergdahl went into detail about his five years in captivity, many of which were spent in a cage.
‘It was getting so bad that I was literally looking at myself, you know, looking at joints, looking my ribs and just going, “I’m gonna die here from sickness, or I can die escaping,”‘ Bergdahl said. ‘You know, it didn’t really matter.’
A US official says that Bergdahl twice tried to escape, and was severely punished both times when he was recaptured.
‘When they recaptured him and brought him back, the next day they spread-eagled and secured him to a metal bed frame,’ Terrence Russell, a military official who debriefs former U.S. captives, told Langan in another video.
‘They took a plastic pipe … and they started beating his feet and his legs repeatedly with this plastic pipe. … The idea was to just beat him and injure his legs and his feet so that he could not walk away again.’