Military prosecutors said on Friday they will not drop premeditated murder charges against a U.S. Navy SEAL charged with stabbing to death a teenaged Islamic State militant in Iraq in 2017, despite testimony from another SEAL who claimed to have killed the prisoner. Navy SEAL medic Corey Scott told the court on Thursday that he held his thumb over the victim’s breathing tube until he died, saying he did so to save the young militant from being tortured by Iraqi forces. Scott said the young man’s original injuries – a leg wound and collapsed lung – were not life threatening but that he was breathing through the tube when Navy SEAL Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher stabbed him in the neck.
