His rage worsened as he deployed to Afghanistan in late This article is more than 8 years old. Prosecution and defence contested issue of parole for US staff sergeant who killed 16 Afghan villagers in attack last year. Robert Bales has pleaded guilty to killing 16 civilians in Afghanistan.
Topics Afghanistan US military news. Reuse this content. Robert was a wounded warrior: a soldier who had fallen victim to a manic state of hypervigilance, a soldier who had been without sleep for 90 hours, a soldier who saw signs in the night sky that led him off-base to hunt Taliban insurgents, a soldier who snapped and went berserk when confronted by those he perceived as the enemy.
Robert left his base on a mission, because he firmly believed that if he were to do nothing, a coordinated Taliban offensive against his outpost was imminent, and would result in the slaughter of all US soldiers and Afghan troops stationed there. Robert does not deserve a life sentence without parole.
Robert maintains a deep, unfathomable remorse for the horror that he inflicted on the victims and survivors, and will carry that remorse for the rest of his life.
Robert is no exceptional, cold-blooded monster. His PTSD and trauma are not unique. Rob Stelle told the judge. A lawyer for Bales said the clips of the recordings were taken out of context. Nance said he will listen to the entire recordings before deciding whether they can be used at the sentencing.
Prosecutors have flown in nine Afghan civilians from Kandahar Province, and the sentencing, scheduled to last about a week, is expected to afford them their first chance to sit face-to-face with Bales since he stormed their mud-walled compounds. Several villagers testified by video link from Afghanistan during a hearing last year, including a young girl in a bright headscarf who described hiding behind her father as he was shot to death.
Boys told of begging the soldier to spare them, yelling: "We are children! We are children! The villagers, some of whom have expressed outrage that Bales is going to escape the death penalty, have not encountered him in person since the attack, nor have they heard him apologize. Bales, who told a judge at his plea hearing that he couldn't explain why he committed the killings, did not say then that he was sorry, but his lawyers hinted that an apology might be forthcoming at his sentencing.
Jeffery Nance, asked Bales what his reason was for killing the civilians, Bales said, "I've asked that question a million times since then. And there's not a good reason in the world for why I did the horrible things I did. With simple "yes sir" and "no sir" responses, Bales affirmed that he killed the 16 people in March , that he had no legal justification for the killing, that he was not acting in self-defense and that it was a freely made decision to kill them.
The sergeant also said that he did not recall setting a compound on fire, but he did not contest that it was on fire.
The judge also asked Bales about the steroid he was using to build muscle tone with Bales saying it "definitely increased by irritability and anger. Bales, 39, pleaded guilty today to 16 counts of premeditated murder, six counts of attempted murder and seven counts of assault. The judge accepted his guilty plea at the end of the hearing and scheduled the sentencing for Aug.
His only not guilty plea was to a charge of impeding the investigation by destroying a laptop computer.
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