Navy prosecutors will not drop charges against Special Warfare Chief Edward Gallagher, a SEAL accused of murdering an injured ISIS fighter, despite Thursday’s revelation that another SEAL claims responsibility for the death.
Special Warfare Operator First Class Corey Scott testified that he saw Gallagher, 40, stab the injured teenager with his knife while deployed to Iraq in 2017 but said under cross-examination that it was he, not Gallagher, who caused the fighter’s death. Prosecutors will continue with the case, saying that “the credibility of the witness is for the jury to decide.”
Scott, a trained combat medic, said the fighter died from asphyxiation after he placed his thumb over a breathing tube the SEALs had inserted into the teenager’s mouth.
“I knew he was going to die anyway,” Scott said. “I wanted to save him from waking up to what had happened next.”
Scott explained that he had seen Iraqi forces rape, torture, and kill prisoners. He told investigators that the fighter died from asphyxiation but was not asked to clarify. He was granted immunity by the prosecution in exchange for his testimony.
That testimony reportedly flustered a Navy prosecutor, who proceeded to call Scott a liar.
Gallagher’s defense team says that he only provided medical aid to the injured fighter after he was brought to the SEAL base following an airstrike. Prosecutors allege he stabbed the teenager in the neck with a knife and took a picture with the corpse that he texted to fellow SEALs with the caption “Good story behind this one. Got him with my hunting knife.”
The killing of the teenage fighter has been the focal point of the case against Gallagher, who is charged with multiple war crimes for what some fellow SEALs said was reckless behavior. Gallagher’s teammates have also accused him of shooting a young girl and an elderly man with a sniper rifle. Gallagher’s actions reportedly got so bad that fellow snipers would fire warning shots in an attempt to save civilians.
Lead defense attorney Timothy Parlatore said such allegations are nothing more than the grumblings of disgruntled subordinates.
“[T]his is not a murder, this is a mutiny, this is a group of young disgruntled sailors that didn’t like being told that they were cowards, and so they decided to conspire to take down the chief,” Parlatore told reporters prior to the trial’s start Tuesday.
Gallagher’s case drew national attention after it was reported that President Trump was considering him for a pardon. That attention ballooned after it was revealed that Navy prosecutors had embedded email tracking software in their correspondence with the defense team, leading to the dismissal of the lead prosecutor and Gallagher’s pretrial release. The trial is expected to last approximately three weeks.
