During a job interview with the CIA in 2011, Army Major Matt Golsteyn, a decorated Green Beret, admitted to killing a suspected Taliban bombmaker a year earlier while serving as a captain during a deployment to Afghanistan with the 3rd Special Forces Group.
Army investigators later claimed that Golsteyn told CIA interviewers he had shot the unarmed man. Golsteyn said that he and two other soldiers destroyed the body in a burn pit on the military base, the Army Times reported.
Golsteyn, the newspaper added, denied that account and said that investigators misconstrued what was said “to fit a narrative bent on charging him.”
According to military documents, the Afghan man had been taken into custody over suspicions that he planted explosives that killed two Marines a few days earlier, according to military documents, which added that the suspect was released but killed soon afterward.
Golsteyn was charged with premeditated murder in December 2018.
A U.S. Army Special Operations Command spokesman said at the time that “Golsteyn’s immediate commander has determined that sufficient evidence exists to warrant” the charge against him, NBC News reported.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/green-beret-charged-murder-urges-military-dismiss-case-n962371
An Army board of inquiry initially cleared Golsteyn but recommended that he be discharged and that his Silver Star Medal and Special Forces tab be stripped from him. It also said that a medal, the Distinguished Service Cross, that had been approved for him be rescinded.
The Army charged him with murder in 2018, the Army Times said.
Golsteyn pleaded not guilty.
President Donald Trump granted Golsteyn clemency before his trial began and said that the clemency should include erasing all adverse consequences of his arrest.
The Army, after Trump’s term as president ended, denied Golsteyn’s appeal that he be restored his Silver Star Medal and Special Forces tab, the Army Times reported.
“Presidential pardon is a sign of forgiveness and ‘does not indicate innocence,’” the board wrote in its rejection letter.
