2 SEALS, 2 Marine Raiders charged with murder

Update on the Logan Melgar murder (from a year ago):

The military has formally charged two Navy SEALs and two special-operations Marines in one of the most grisly murder cases in recent U.S. history, The Daily Beast has learned.

Two members of elite SEAL Team Six, Petty Officer Anthony E. DeDolph and Chief Petty Officer Adam C. Matthews, along with two Marine Raiders face charges that include felony murder, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, burglary, hazing, and involuntary manslaughter in the strangulation death of a Green Beret, Army Staff Sgt. Logan Melgar. All four were charged with felony murder and with lying to investigators.

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The Marine Raiders’ names have not been made public. All four names are redacted to the public on the formal charge sheet.

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According to the charges, the alleged conspirators “drove to the Marine quarters” in Bamako, Mali “to obtain duct tape,” then drove to the shared Army/Navy headquarters, “entered the bedroom of SSG Melgar by breaking through his locked door,” restrained him with the duct tape, and “strangled SSG Melgar by placing him in a chokehold.”

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There was an ongoing disagreement between the Green Beret and DeDolph over the SEALs’ professionalism, a source familiar with the episode told The Daily Beast. Melgar was upset with lapses in operational security, according to a source familiar with the investigation’s findings. DeDolph and Matthews, both members of SEAL Team Six, were soliciting prostitutes and taking them back to the safe house in Bamako, Mali’s capital city. As The Daily Beast reported last year, Melgar had found the SEALs skimming cash from a fund to recruit informants about local Islamist activity.

  The Daily Beast

SEAL team 6, the vaunted Osama bin Laden capturers.

Melgar was part of a six-man intelligence operation in Mali supporting counterterrorism efforts against al-Qaeda’s local affiliate, known as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Melgar reported the violation to his chain of command, drawing the ire of the SEALs and two Marine Raiders, who were also on the team assigned to assist with counterterrorism.

Then on June 4, 2017, Melgar was invited to an embassy party, and the rest of the team was not.

[...]

DeDolph and Matthews, along with the two Marine Raiders, allegedly confronted Melgar at the safehouse around 5 a.m. DeDolph, a mixed-martial arts fighter, put Melgar in a chokehold. The attackers and Melgar fell onto the bed with Matthews on top of Melgar, according to a source familiar with the inquiry.

DeDolph realized Melgar wasn’t breathing, according to a preliminary investigation report first reported by NBC News. The SEALs tried to resuscitate Melgar with CPR and opened a hole in his throat. They then took Melgar [...] to a French medical facility, where he was pronounced dead.

At the clinic, DeDolph admitted to an embassy official he choked Melgar, according to NBC News and subsequent reports.

After the SEALs returned to the safehouse, they engaged in a cover-up, according to several witnesses—including cleaning up evidence and coaching witnesses. The charge sheet accuses the members of the conspiracy with “providing a false timeline of events to the Navy chain of command,” and “purposefully” left out the duct tape when making their statements on Melgar’s death. They as well allegedly “disposed of the alcohol” they kept in the shared Army-Navy quarters, and lied to investigators.

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Logan Melgar’s wife, Michelle, was briefed on the case earlier this month in Norfolk, Virginia, and again this week at Fort Bragg, according to sources. She declined to discuss the case in detail with The Daily Beast, but said she supports the prosecutor and that her goal was to not allow the incident to cause a rift between the Special Forces and SEALs and Marine Raiders.

“While I have faith that the military court will handle this situation in the best possible way, I also understand that the mission continues,” she said. “Our men must work well together, and we need to support them in doing so.”

Mighty generous.

Update on the death of Staff Sgt. Logan Melgar

[T]wo Navy SEALs are under investigation for killing Melgar—an investigation, first reported by The New York Times, sending shockwaves throughout the special-operations community.

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This account is based on five members of the special-operations community who were not cleared to speak publicly.

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As the elite troops do in so many countries, they operate in the shadows, with comparatively little oversight—and what their actions actually look like on the ground can be much dirtier than the heroic image the Pentagon prefers to portray.

For example, part of the intelligence gathering operation in Mali involved a fund used to pay informants.

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Melgar, two special operations sources say, discovered the SEALs were pocketing some of the money from the informant fund. The SEALS offered to cut him in, but Melgar declined, these sources said.

  Daily Beast

This account has Melgar dying from asphyxiation during "an altercation" with the two SEALs.

The SEALs told superiors that Melgar was drunk during so-called combatives—that is, hand-to-hand fighting exercises.

Okay, so nobody said the SEALs were smart. An autopsy was bound to be performed.

A former AFRICOM official who saw the autopsy report said no drugs or alcohol were found in Melgar’s system. At least one source believes he did not drink alcohol at all.

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Melgar’s wife, Michelle, was also suspicious, three sources tell The Daily Beast. She raised concerns about the cause of death and allegations of drinking, according to three people familiar with the investigation, including providing investigators emails sent by her husband about problems he was having with the SEALs.

UPDATE 11/16/18:

Four murder convictions.

What the... ??

Story in the New York Times indicates that two Navy SEALs (from the famous Team 6) are "under suspicion" of strangling a Green Beret soldier last June in Mali. Too much to unpack here, just read it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 11/16/18:  Four murder convictions.

Counterterrorism Is a Broad Term

In pre-dawn darkness, a ­Toyota Land Cruiser skidded off a bridge in North Africa in the spring, plunging into the Niger River. When rescuers arrived, they found the bodies of three U.S. Army commandos — alongside three dead women.

What the men were doing in the impoverished country of Mali, and why they were still there a month after the United States suspended military relations with its government, is at the crux of a mystery that officials have not fully explained even 10 weeks later.

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Mali, U.S. military personnel had ceased all training and civil-affairs work by the end of March, about a week after the country’s democratically elected president was overthrown in a military coup.

The military’s Africa Command, which oversees operations on the continent, said the three service members killed were among “a small number of personnel” who had been aiding the Malian military before the coup and had remained in the country to “provide assistance to the U.S. Embassy” and “maintain situational awareness on the unfolding events.”

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The women killed in the wreck were identified as Moroccan prostitutes who had been riding with the soldiers, according to a senior Army official and a U.S. counterterrorism consultant briefed on the incident, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

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At the very least, the April 20 accident exposed a team of Special Operations forces that had been working for months in Mali, a Saharan country racked by civil war and a rising Islamist insurgency. More broadly, the crash has provided a rare glimpse of elite U.S. commando units in North Africa, where they have been secretly engaged in counterterrorism actions against al-Qaeda affiliates.
  WaPo

Counterterrorism? With hookers?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.