Trial challenges Navy justice
Five sailors, including three Navy SEALs, have been granted immunity to testify in the case of a SEAL charged with sexually assaulting a fellow sailor during a deployment to Iraq in 2019, prosecutors said during a motions hearing this week.
Special Warfare Operator 1st Class Adel Enayat, in his dress blue uniform, was in a Naval Base San Diego courtroom Tuesday for a hearing in his ongoing court-martial.
His legal team, led by civilian attorney Jeremiah Sullivan, argued that previous SEAL cases involving Enayat’s SEAL Team 7 have tainted the Navy legal community and the investigative process.
Enayat is charged with a sexual assault that prosecutors say occurred after an alcohol-fuelled Fourth of July party in Iraq in 2019 that left a female sailor with bruises on her face and body.
According to the SEAL’s charge sheet, he strangled the woman, bit her face and penetrated her without consent. A friend later took photos of the woman’s injuries, according to The Associated Press.
The party was held two days after another SEAL Team 7 member from a different platoon —Special Warfare Operator Chief Edward Gallagher —was acquitted on charges that he murdered an ISIS fighter and shot civilians during a 2017 deployment to Iraq. He was convicted of posing for pictures with the corpse of the dead fighter.
It was unclear from discussion in court what each witness with immunity might testify to seeing during that party, though at a previous hearing Sullivan said more than one saw the victim sitting on Enayat’s lap. The victim allegedly told a friend that the encounter started as consensual before it became violent, the AP reported.
The Gallagher case — and all its twists and turns — was at the centre of arguments by Sullivan, who said the misconduct of San Diego Navy prosecutors, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the words of former Naval Special Warfare Commander Rear Adm. Collin Green during and after Gallagher’s courtmartial raise questions about Enayat’s ability to get a fair hearing.
Sullivan also said witnesses were reluctant to talk to him, in part because of the prosecutorial misconduct that occurred in the Gallagher case and also because it garnered so much media attention.
The issues that came up from the Gallagher case, Sullivan argued, affect Enayat’s, and said prosecutors should be compelled to produce documents and court rulings from it.
Prosecutors argued Sullivan did not submit any evidence that anyone involved in the Gallagher case had touched Enayat’s or that support his argument that they are relevant to the case.
The judge, Cmdr. Chad Temple, said he’d take Sullivan’s concerns under advisement and did not rule on the motion.
Enayat will be back in court for a hearing in November, with trial scheduled to start Feb. 1.