Officer in Afghanistan Was a Hero
The story of Captain Roger Hill is compelling. Army Hanging Hero Out to Dry. Often when commanders on the local level figure out a way to win the war, their superiors take them to task for coloring outside the lines. the Taliban does not follow rules. When they capture or kill our soldiers and Marines, they are known to butcher them and distribute their body parts as souvenirs.
CPT Hill, an Army company commander, who had suffered an extremely high casualty rate in his unit, discovered that trusted Afghans working on his forward operating base were traitors who communicated troop movement information to the Taliban. He detained them and notified higher headquarters for assistance in moving them to a place where they could be interrogated and perhaps tried for their crimes. The battalion staff stalled him for 4 days until the 96-hour time limit for holding detainees expired. The information about the betrayal was obtained through sensitive sources and methods which could not be revealed to Afghan forces who might take custody of the detainees, so CPT Hill and his First Sergeant knew they needed to extract confessions from them. Confessions would not be classified and could justify their continued detention. Otherwise they would have to be released, and therefore continue to work against our soldiers. In order to assist his interrogators, he went outside with some less important detainees and fired his weapon into the ground three times, to simulate their execution. That information was used by his interrogators to extract useful information from the high threat detainees. A War’s Impossible Mission
The Army, rather than decorating CPT Hill for his courage and initiative, brought war crimes charges against him. The Law Firm of Puckett and Faraj, PC, defended CPT Hill during a three-day hearing at Forward Operating Base Salerno in Afghanistan. The investigating officer, a courageous Army Lieutenant Colonel in the Military Police Corps, wrote a report, which was promptly sealed and never released to his attorneys. After originally insisting that CPT Hill should face a general court-martial on war crimes charges and face the prospect of a dismissal from the Army (a dishonorable discharge) and years of confinement, the legal advisor to the commanding general asked that we quickly offer to accept administrative discipline by ART 15 non-judicial punishment and resign his commission and avoid a federal felony conviction. CPT Hill agreed and now is back home awaiting word on his discharge from the Secretary of the Army.
Puckett & Faraj PC
Neal Puckett and Haytham Faraj are criminal defense and general litigation attorneys and partners in the The Law Firm of Puckett and Faraj, PC. They have decades of trial experience defending those accused of criminal charges in federal and military courts-martial. Mr. Puckett and Mr. Faraj also represent clients in a variety of administrative hearings including Boards of Inquiry, Administrative Separation hearings, immigration removal hearings, Boards of Corrections of Military and Naval Records, Military Discharge Review Boards and National Security Clearance hearings, among others. Neal Puckett and Haytham Faraj have also represented those who have been harmed or injured by the negligence, recklessness, or deliberate acts or failures of others.
