Soldier who spent five years in Taliban captivity faces life in prison, after being freed last year in a prisoner swap with five Guantánamo Bay detainees

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

The longest-held US prisoner of war of the post-9/11 era will be charged with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy and faces a potential penalty of life in prison.

An expected court martial proceeding for Sgt Bowe Bergdahl will initiate a dramatic fall from grace for a soldier whose release after five years in Taliban captivity was a top priority for Barack Obama.

US soldier Bowe Bergdahl freed by Taliban in Afghanistan Read more

Bergdahl’s attorney, Eugene Fidell, confirmed to the Guardian that the army charged Bergdahl on Wednesday afternoon. A preliminary hearing in a military court is scheduled for 22 April in San Antonio, Fidell said.

Army Col Daniel King, speaking from Fort Bragg in North Carolina, said that the “misbehavior before the enemy” charge carried a maximum penalty of lifetime confinement, while desertion carries the less-stringent maximum penalty of five years imprisonment.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bowe Bergdahl’s father Bob: ‘I’m a father who wants his son back’. Link to video

Under the relatively obscure misbehavior charge, the army will have to show “disobedience, neglect or intentional misconduct” in Bergdahl’s disappearance.

Shortly after Bergdahl went missing from his base in 2009 in eastern Afghanistan, speculation grew that he had deserted. A formal army investigation began interviewing him in August 2014, shortly after his return to the US.

Bergdahl has been at the center of an unlikely political firestorm over US detentions policy since the Obama administration secured his release from the Taliban in May 2014.

His freedom came after the administration consented, without informing Congress, to release five high-ranking Taliban detainees from Guantánamo Bay. The trade ignited a furious denunciation from many congressional Republicans, who charge that the swap effectively rewarded the persistent insurgency that has stalemated the US in its longest ever war.

Bowe Bergdahl's release by Taliban signals new US political battle Read more

A former chairman of the House armed services committee, ex-Representative Buck McKeon of California, has called the lack of congressional notification a violation of legal restrictions Congress has placed on unilateral detainee releases.

The so-called “Taliban Five” – Mohammad Fazl, Mullah Norullah Noori, Mohammed Nabi, Khairullah Khairkhwa, and Abdul Haq Wasiq – are undergoing an unspecified period of “monitoring” in Qatar, which brokered the deal. Specific terms of the deal have never been released. Unsubstantiated reports have alleged at least one of them has returned to some form of militancy.

Obama, in a White House ceremony flanked by Bergdahl’s parents, said upon announcement of the swap that the US had an “ironclad commitment to bring our prisoners of war home”.

For months afterward, the administration ardently defended the swap and batted back questions about both Bergdahl’s possible desertion and the wisdom of trading detainees with the Taliban ahead of the end of hostilities. Obama announced on Tuesday that he will delay his long-promised US troop drawdown in Afghanistan.

The charging decision reflects an undercurrent of bitterness within the army over Bergdahl. Usually expressed in off-the-record settings, there are those in the army who consider Bergdahl practically a traitor for walking mysteriously off Combat Outpost Mest-Lalak in Paktika Province. A private first class at the time of his June 2009 capture, the army promoted Bergdahl while in captivity.

A 2012 story by the reporter Michael Hastings, drawing on emails Bergdahl sent his family, indicated that the soldier had grown disgusted by the Afghanistan war. “I have seen their ideas and I am ashamed to even be American. The horror of the self-righteous arrogance that they thrive in. It is all revolting,” Bergdahl wrote.