US soldier pleads guilty to slaying 16 Afghans

REUTERS

"There is not a good reason in this world for why I did the horrible things that I did - Staff Sergeant Robert Bales"

TACOMA: A US Army sergeant who killed 16 Afghan civilians in cold blood last year has pleaded guilty to premeditated murder and other charges under a deal with military prosecutors that spares him from the death penalty.

Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, a decorated

veteran of four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, admitted to leaving his Army post in the Afghan province of Kandahar last March to gun down and set fire to unarmed villagers, mostly women and children, in attacks on their family compounds.

“As far as why, I’ve asked that question a million times since then,” Bales said, in a calm, steady voice, when the judge pressed him for an explanation. “There is not a good reason in this world for why I did the horrible things that I did.”

The slayings marked the worst case of civilian slaughter blamed on a single, rogue US soldier since the Vietnam War and further strained US-Afghan relations after more than a decade of conflict in that country.

Bales, 39, now faces a life term in prison, but a military jury will decide if and when he will ever be eligible for parole after further proceedings set to begin August 19.

Prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty in return for Bales’ guilty plea to the murder charges he faced. The judge, Army Colonel Jeffery Nance, accepted the agreement at the end of a lengthy hearing during which Bales was required to recount the events in question and to convince the judge he understood his plea and the consequences of his acts.

Wearing a military dress uniform, Bales stood beside his lawyer, Emma Scanlan, as she entered guilty pleas on his behalf to 16 counts of premeditated murder, six counts of attempted murder and seven counts of assault, as well as to alcohol and drug charges.

Reading through the list of charges himself, one at a time, later in the hearing, Bales acknowledged that he committed 10 of the slayings by shooting and burning his victims and that he killed six others by gunshot only. “I then did kill her by shooting her with a firearm and burning her. This act was without legal justification,” he said during a matter-of-fact recitation of his crimes, delivered with no visible sign of emotion.