Honor and Betrayal: The Untold Story of the Navy SEALs Who Captured the "Butcher of Fallujah" - and the Shameful Ordeal

THEY JUST CAPTURED IRAQ'S MOST WANTED TERRORIST. NOW THEY HAD TO DEFEND THEIR HONOR. On a daring nighttime raid in September 2009, a team of Navy SEALs grabbed the notorious terrorist Ahmad Hashim Abd al-Isawi, the villainous “Butcher of Fallujah," mastermind behind the 2004 murder and mutilation of four American contractors. Within hours of his capture, al-Isawi, with his lip bleeding, claimed he had been beaten in his holding cell. Three Navy SEALs-;members of the same team that had just captured the notorious terrorist-;were charged with prisoner abuse, dereliction of duty, and lying. On the word of a terrorist! The three Navy SEALs were placed under house arrest and forbidden contact with their comrades. Despite enormous pressure from their commanders to sign confessions to “lesser charges," the three resolute and fearless SEALs each demanded a court-martial. They were determined to prove their innocence. When Fox News broke the story about the accusations, Americans were outraged. Over 300,000 people signed petitions demanding the SEALs be exonerated. Their SEAL teammates were furious; but nothing could stop the cold determination of the military's top brass to hang these guys out to dry-;not even U.S. congressmen who petitioned the Pentagon to drop the charges. Honor and Betrayal is a no-holds-barred account by bestselling author Patrick Robinson. It reveals for the first time the entire story, from the night the SEALs stormed the al-Qaeda desert stronghold, the accusations and legal twists and turns that followed, to the cut-and-thrust drama in the courtroom where the fate of three American heroes hung in the balance. Patrick Robinson is the coauthor of the recent New York Times #1 nonfiction bestseller Lone Survivor. He is also the author of several interna­tional bestselling U.S. Navy-based novels, including Intercept, Diamondhead, To the Death, and The Delta Solution, as well as several nonfiction bestsellers, including his New York Times bestseller A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers, and the international bestseller One Hundred Days. He lives in the Cayman Islands and and spends his summers in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.