UPDATED 2019/01/25 3:00PM
Decorated Green Beret Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn, who is charged with committing premeditated murder while deployed in Afghanistan, has asked the Army to dismiss his case. Golsteyn said in a letter Friday, January 25th, that the handling of his case has been a “miscarriage of justice” and insisted that the military’s justice system has been manipulating evidence against him.
Golsteyn is accused of fatally shooting an Afghan man on February 22nd, 2010 because he suspected that he was a bomb maker. According to military documents, the man had been taken into custody on suspicions that he made explosives that killed two Marines days earlier. He was released, but was killed sometimes afterward.
Golsteyn was charged with premeditated murder almost nine years later in December 2018. He says that it was a polygraph test that he took in 2011 that he took while applying to be in the CIA that prompted the investigation. In 2014, he was reprimanded for his actions and no formal charges were brought against him because there was a lack of physical evidence.
In 2016, Golsteyn went on Fox News and admitted to killing the man, bringing new attention to the case.
He wrote in his letter on Friday, “There is no question that the charge of premeditated murder grossly misrepresents my conduct in Afghanistan and exposes me to the death penalty for serving this nation in accordance with the requirements of my mission. The military justice system has been compromised in my case.”
He set a deadline of five days for a response, adding that if he did not hear back, he would appeal to a general higher up the military food chain. He said that failing to dismiss the premeditated murder charge would reflect “approval for the misuse of the military justice system and the questionable conduct by military lawyers and investigators.”