I’m a deserter says US soldier held by Taliban

BOWE Bergdahl, the US soldier held captive by the Taliban for five years after mysteriously disappearing from his Afghan base, yesterday admitted desertion and misbehaviour before the enemy.

The sergeant, pictured, entered his plea before a military judge at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Bergdahl, 31, had argued that he couldn’t expect a fair trial after Donald Trump called him ‘a no-good traitor who should have been executed’.

He was released in 2014 after the Obama administration exchanged him for five Taliban detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

Bergdahl said that he deserted his outpost in June 2009 to reach a bigger US base 18 miles away to report a ‘critical problem in my chain of command’.

But former comrades claim that it was a deliberate bid to join the enemy.