Report: Navy Investigating if Two Navy SEALs Strangled Green Beret in Mali

The New York Times reported that the Navy has opened an investigation to determine if two members of the Navy SEAL Team 6 strangled a Green Beret in Mali last June:

Staff Sgt. Logan J. Melgar, a 34-year-old veteran of two deployments to Afghanistan, was found dead on June 4 in the embassy housing he shared in the Malian capital, Bamako, with several other Special Operations forces assigned to the West African nation to help with training and counterterrorism missions.The soldier’s superiors in Stuttgart, Germany, almost immediately suspected foul play, and dispatched an investigating officer to the scene within 24 hours, military officials said. Agents from the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command spent months on the case before handing it off last month to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

A medical examiner ruled Melgar’s death a homicide from strangulation. The military flew out the two Navy SEALs, who have not been identified, and placed them on administrative leave.

NCIS said it does not comment on ongoing investigations. So far the public has no details on Melgar’s death, including a possible motive. Some in the Green Beret community think it may have been because “of a personal dispute among housemates gone wrong” or Melgar “stumbled upon some illicit activity the SEALs were involved in, and they silenced him.”

The Army and the Africa Command never released a statement on Melgar’s death, “not even after investigators changed their characterization of the two SEALs from ‘witnesses’ to ‘persons of interest,’ meaning they were trying to determine what the commandos knew about the crime and if they were involved.”

The Navy received the case in September after the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command investigated the death for months.

Tags: Africa, Military

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