Green Berets Kicked Out For Beating Alleged Child Rapist: Now One Speaks Out

Green Berets involved in a 2011 incident when they reportedly attacked an alleged child rapist from the Afghan Local Police (ALP) are now speaking out — at least one of them is.

Despite being under a gag order from the Pentagon, one of the Green Berets, Sergeant 1st Class Charles Martland, who was discharged last week, the Daily Mail reports, had his appeal rejected, provided a written statement at the behest of California Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican.

The statement deals with the actions he took on the day of September 6, 2011, and if true, are likely to infuriate most of the country.

“Kicking me out of the army is morally wrong and the entire country knows it,” Martland wrote in the statement first obtained by CNN.

Martland acted along with another of his fellow Green Berets, Captain Daniel Quinn, when the alleged rape victim, a small Afghan boy, told them through an interpreter that he’d been tied up and raped repeatedly at the home of ALP commander Abdul Rahman.

The boy’s mother said she tried to stop the attacks, but was given a beating by the official’s brother in response.

Quinn then supposedly verified the story with other ALP commanders before the two Green Berets invited the accused to their camp.

“After the child rapist laughed it off and referenced that it was only a boy, Captain Quinn picked him up and threw him,” said Martland in the statement. That’s when Martland joined in on the action, body slamming the commander “multiple times,” kicking him in the ribs, and putting his foot on his throat.

The statement continued.

“I continued to body slam him and throw him for fifty meters until he was outside the camp. He was never knocked out, and he ran away from our camp.”

In all, Martland said, the incident lasted no longer than five minutes.

Most of Martland’s story was corroborated through his “partner-in-crime,” so to speak, Captain Quinn, in an appearance on a CNN program last week.

“We basically had to make sure that he fully understood that if he ever went near that boy or his mother again, there was going to be hell to pay,” Quinn said.

“While I understand that a military lawyer can say that I was legally wrong, we felt a moral obligation to act,” Martland added.

So why not just report the alleged child rapist to their superiors? Well, Quinn says it’s because no one would have done anything about it.

“We were trying to build up the local government. Us acting after the local government fails to can certainly undermine their credibility,” Quinn said.

Army Gen. John Campbell, in a previous report from the Military website, denied implications that U.S. soldiers had been told to “look the other way” on allegations of sexual abuse leveled at children in the Kunduz Province of Afghanistan, where the incident occurred.

Campbell said that personnel were encouraged to report such allegations to their superiors.

In the Fox News report, Martland is described as only having “shoved” the accused Afghan commander.

But the news site also dug up a LinkedIn discussion with Col. Steve Johnson, who was a U.S. commander in Afghanistan at the time of the incident, and had a considerably different stance from that of the Green Berets involved.

Johnson emphasized that the confrontation went beyond shoving, noting that the pair “absolutely beat the crap out of him.”

He further described the military’s position in that discussion.

“The entire operational Chain of Command supported the relief for cause and reprimand. Vigilantism is illegal in the United States and should not be condoned elsewhere…. We should do our best to ensure that the accused is brought to justice legally and fairly — we should never take the law into our own hands (as Martland and Quinn did).”

What do you think about how the military treated these Green Berets over the incident, readers?

[Image via Glynnis Jones / Shutterstock.com]