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Pvt. Travis T. King, the American soldier who returned to the United States last month after crossing into North Korea in July, has been charged in a military court with multiple crimes, including desertion, assaulting other soldiers and child pornography .
Private King, 23, is being held in a civilian jail outside Fort Bliss, near El Paso, according to a family spokesman. He was transferred there from Fort Sam Houston, near San Antonio, where he was undergoing reintegration procedures.
The charges were filed Sunday by Fort Bliss officials. Trooper King learned about them Wednesday, the family spokesman said.
Private King’s mother, Claudine Gates of Racine, Wisconsin, said in a statement that her son should be considered innocent and that she was “extremely concerned for his mental health.”
“The man I raised, the man I left at boot camp, the man who spent the holidays with me before being sent to the military did not drink,” Gates said in a statement. “A mother knows her son and I think something happened to mine while he was deployed.”
The charges against Private King, detailed in a charging document obtained by The New York Times, include desertion for crossing into North Korea while with a tour group in mid-July. The document also details charges of hitting an officer in the head and kicking a sergeant in the head in October 2022.
The child pornography charges relate to his activity on the social media platform Snapchat, where he is accused of soliciting a minor to post partially nude photographs.
The offenses faced by Private King were previously reported by Reuters.
Private King had been assigned to South Korea as a member of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division. After being released in July from a South Korean detention center, where he had spent time accused of assault, he was escorted by U.S. military personnel to Incheon International Airport, outside Seoul, to board a plane bound for USA.
Instead of boarding the plane, he fled north through the Demilitarized Zone, which separates North and South Korea, and the next day took a bus to the border village of Panmunjom, which is inside the DMZ and allows the visit of tourists.
There is still much to know about Private King’s time in North Korea. Officials there expelled him in late September, saying they had found him guilty of “illegal intrusion” into their territory, according to North Korea’s official Central News Agency.