The American soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians is expected to be charged with multiple offences within the next seven days and will face trial in the United States.
Villagers who survived the mass shootings, allegedly carried out by US Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, 38, on March 11, are likely to be flown to the US to appear as witnesses for the prosecution at his court martial, a US official said.
As a confusing picture emerged of the soldier – conflicting accounts of a brave warrior trusted by his comrades and a man suffering from debt problems and bitterness over a failed promotion bid – John Browne, his civilian lawyer, travelled to his prison cell at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas to have his first face-to-face meeting with his client who is being held in solitary confinement.
Staff Sergeant Bales is being held in the military prison that also housed Second Lieutenant William Calley, who was convicted in the US Army’s most notorious civilian massacre, the shooting of up to 504 men, women and children in My Lai, South Vietnam in 1968.
US Army investigators have been gathering statements about the killings of nine Afghan children, three women and four men in two villages in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province. He is accused of going from door to door and methodically shooting or stabbing them to death. Five other Afghans, including three children under the age of 10, were wounded and are being treated at a hospital at Kandahar military base.
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The investigating team is also examining claims by villagers that some of the women were sexually assaulted. But a US official said that there was no evidence at this stage that any of the women were raped.
No motive for the killings has yet emerged. But three events occurred involving Staff Sergeant Bales in the days leading up to the shootings: three days before March 11, his four-bedroom family home in Lake Tapps, Washington State, was put up for sale because of trouble meeting the mortgage; 24 hours earlier, a fellow soldier at his command outpost in Kandahar had a leg blown off by a landmine while he was standing next to him; and on March 1 two American soldiers were killed by an Afghan soldier in southern Afghanistan during riots over the “inadvertent” burning of Korans by US servicemen at Bagram prison. All US troops were warned by America’s top commander in Afghanistan not to take revenge for the killings.
Staff Sergeant Bales’s lawyer and military prosecutors are looking into his past to detect any signs of a personality trait that might have led to what happened. But much of the soldier’s career mirrors that of thousands of other US service personnel over the past ten years. He served a total of 37 months in Iraq – 12 months in 2003-04, 15 months in 2006-07 and 10 months in 2009-10. The deployment in 2007 included fierce fighting and in one battle in which he played a significant role, 250 insurgents were killed. He had been in Afghanistan for just over three months.
The recent failure to win promotion appears to have hit him and his family hard. Karilyn, his wife, known as Kari, wrote in a blog that he was disappointed after “all the work Bob has done and all the sacrifices he has made for his love of his country, family and friends”.
Court records show that Staff Sergeant Bales was charged with assault in 2002, but the charge was dismissed. Another charge, a hit-and-run involving a parked car, was also dropped.
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Mr Browne has dismissed reports from US officials that his client had a drinking problem. Alcohol was found in his living space at Camp Belambay, his outpost in Kandahar. “You don’t get drunk and go out and kill children,” Mr Browne said.