Lawmakers are calling on the Pentagon to fully reinstate a decorated United States Army sergeant whose career status is under review after he hit an American-backed Afghan militia officer for raping a boy.

The Special Forces member, Sgt. First Class Charles Martland, helped to beat up the militia commander, Abdul Rahman, in 2011 after he abducted a boy and kept him chained to his bed as a sex slave.

Sergeant Martland, who was on his second deployment with the Green Berets in Afghanistan and who received a Bronze Star for his actions during a Taliban ambush, later wrote to the Army that he and a Special Forces captain, Dan Quinn, “felt that morally we could no longer stand by” and allow the Afghan Local Police “to commit atrocities.”

Captain Quinn had summoned Abdul Rahman after the boy’s mother took her son to the American base in Afghanistan’s northern Kunduz Province to complain about the abuse.