Army Charges Special Forces Soldier in 2010 Killing of Afghan

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/14/us/politics/mathew-golsteyn-special-forces-murder-charges.html

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WASHINGTON — The Army has charged a Special Forces soldier with premeditated murder in a shooting that happened nearly nine years ago in southern Afghanistan, according to military documents obtained by The New York Times.

The accusations against the soldier, Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn, are the latest chapter in a winding story that began after he told the Central Intelligence Agency — during a job interview in 2011 — that he had killed a suspected Afghan bomb maker a year earlier, during the battle for the city of Marja in Afghanistan’s volatile Helmand Province.

Lt. Col. Loren Bymer, a spokesman for Army Special Operations Command, confirmed the charges on Friday and said a preliminary hearing date had not been set. Task and Purpose first reported the charges.

The military opened an initial investigation into the 2010 shooting after Major Golsteyn admitted to it to the C.I.A. The Army closed the case in 2013 without charging Major Golsteyn, but later stripped him of a Silver Star, one of the highest awards for valor, and an elite Special Forces tab. He was also issued a letter of reprimand.

During a Fox News interview in November 2016, Major Golsteyn again said he had killed the Afghan man, who had been captured by American troops, found with bomb-making material and then released. It is not clear how Major Golsteyn is believed to have tracked down the man.

Later that month, the Army opened its second investigation into Major Golsteyn.

According to court documents, the shooting happened in February 2010 days after a roadside bomb killed two Marines — Sgt. Jeremy R. McQueary and Lance Cpl. Larry M. Johnson — who had been working with Major Golsteyn’s Green Beret team.

The case is among more than a half-dozen negative episodes involving Special Operations troops that have come to light in the last two years.

They include two members of SEAL Team Six and two Marine commandos who were charged in the strangling of an American Green Beret in Mali in June 2017, and a team of Green Berets under investigation in the beating of an Afghan detainee in October.

On Wednesday, Gen. Tony Thomas, the head of Special Operations Command, sent a “Guidance on Ethics” email to his forces.

Major Golsteyn signed the memo acknowledging his murder charge on Thursday.