Medals to be Stripped from Eddie Gallagher during War Crimes Trial: Trump

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The U.S President Donald Trump has demanded medals be inoperative from prosecutors in the war crimes trial of a Navy seal. He was allegedly involved in murdering an Iraqi prisoner but convicted of unlawfully posing for photos with his dead body. Trump’s announcement was a remarkable rebuke by a U.S president for Navy leadership. Trump wrote on Twitter, “The Prosecutors who lost the case against SEAL Eddie Gallagher (who I released from solitary confinement so he could fight his case properly), were ridiculously given a Navy Achievement Medal”. He added, “Not only did they lose the case, but they also had difficulty with respect to information that may have been obtained from opposing lawyers and for giving immunity in a totally incompetent fashion”.

Trump added in his tweet, “I have directed the Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer & Chief of Naval Operations John Richardson to immediately withdraw and rescind the awards”. The case of Gallagher had become a cause célèbre among Republican legislators and the conservative media. The U.S president said in March that he would order the chief be moved to less restrictive pretrial confinement. Gallagher was turned in by members of his own platoon, who accused him of stabbing a captured and wounded teenage fighter repeatedly in the neck with a custom hunting knife in 2017. He was also charged with obstruction of justice for threatening to kill his colleagues who reported him.

Gallagher was found not guilty of first-degree murder in the death of the captive in a court-martial this month. He was also acquitted of accusations that he had fired at unarmed civilians. Gallagher was convicted of only a single charge related to posing for photographs with the body of the teenage captive. He was sentenced to 4-months’ confinement and a reduction in rank. The prosecution was troubled before the verdict. The lead prosecutor was removed from the case after being caught attaching tracking software to email messages sent to defense lawyers.