Charles Robert Jenkins

Lawyer James B. Craven III mailed a petition July 9 to the Justice Department on behalf of Jenkins' relatives in North Carolina, the Raleigh News and Observer reported.

Jenkins, 64, was serving in an army unit near the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea when he disappeared during a routine patrol in 1965.

Craven said Bush would have ample precedent for granting a pardon, with former presidents having granted executive clemency to Vietnam War resisters, soldiers who were absent without leave and those who, like Jenkins, were accused of desertion but were never tried.

Jenkins and his two daughters were reunited July 9 with his wife, repatriated abductee Hitomi Soga, in Indonesia, which has no extradition treaty with the United States.

The Japan Times Weekly: July 17, 2004
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