IN THE DOCK: Navy SEAL Special Operations Chief, Edward Gallagher.
A decorated 19-year combat veteran and Navy SEAL is facing life imprisonment for a series violent war crimes carried out in Iraq.
Currently being held in a brig at Miramar Navy Base near San Diego, Edward Gallagher, a 39 year-old Special Operations Chief, is facing trial for dozens of offenses including indiscriminately shooting civilians, premeditated murder, stabbing an already wounded teenage ISIS detainee, and performed a re-enlistment ceremony posing with a dead teenager’s bloody corpse in front of an American flag. One incident even included Gallagher using his sniper rifle to murder a girl walking along a riverbank, and an old man carrying a water jug. It is said that he also threatened to kill his fellow SEALs if they dared to report him.
Gallagher denies all the charges.
It is believed that the investigation may widen, and that Gallagher may only be the tip of a bigger iceberg exposing a culture of cruelty within the US Navy special operations. According to the Navy Times, more than dozen other SEALS may get caught up in this case – raising fears of an institution which has allowed its members to act with impunity and with superiors ‘looking the other way’ in order to preserve the reputations of the offenders and their commanding officers.
The New York Times described the extremes which other platoon members had to go to mitigate his psychopathy:
Some platoon members were so distraught by the chief’s actions, investigators said, that they tampered with his sniper rifle to make it less accurate, and fired warning shots to scare away civilians before the chief had a chance to shoot them.
In addition to charges of violent crime, Gallagher is also being accused of unlawfully possessing doses of the anabolic steroid Sustanon-250.
According to Navy prosecutor, Chris Czaplak, Gallagher’s actions have severely undermined the US mission:
“Does the public still believe we are the good guys, because Chief Gallagher decided to act like the monster the terrorists accuse us of being?” he said. “He handed ISIS propaganda manna from heaven. His actions are everything ISIS says we are.”
According to the Navy Times: a trove of documents given to Navy Times shows that at least nine active-duty SEALs at Coronado-based Naval Special Warfare Group 1 and one of their fellow commandos who recently left the service gave sworn statements and provided videotaped interviews about Gallagher to NCIS agents.
Thus far, SEAL officials declined comment…
Continue this story at Navy Times
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