More POWs now eligible for Purple Heart

[unhappycamper]

More POWs now eligible for Purple Heart
By William H. McMichael - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Oct 7, 2008 5:50:48 EDT

An expansion of eligibility criteria could result in retroactive awards of the Purple Heart to prisoners of war who died in captivity and were previously deemed ineligible for the award, the Pentagon announced Monday.

The revised policy allows the retroactive award of the medal to qualifying prisoners of war from Dec. 7, 1941, forward. An estimated 17,000 former service members could be affected by the change, according to the Pentagon’s Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office.

The Purple Heart is awarded to service members who are wounded or killed in combat, an international terrorist attack, during overseas peacekeeping duty, while held as a prisoner of war or while being taken captive.

But the services’ award criteria previously excluded the medal for those who died in captivity if it could not be proved they were wounded or killed by enemy action, Pentagon spokeswoman Eileen Lainez said.

The revised policy presumes that service members who die in captivity as a “qualifying prisoner of war” died as the “result of enemy action,” the result of wounds incurred “in action with the enemy” or as a result of wounds incurred as a “result of enemy action” during capture, unless there is compelling evidence to the contrary, Lainez said.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/10/military_purpleheart_eligibility_100608w/%2e