Washington (dpa) – US Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales was charged Friday with 17 counts of murder in the March 11 killings of Afghan civilians. Bales could face the death penalty for 17 counts of murder with premeditation, along with six counts of attempted murder against additional civilians in Kandahar province, US forces in Afghanistan said in a statement. Bales, 38, is accused of leaving his military base and killing the civilians, many of whom were sleeping, in their homes in a village in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan. Nine children were among the dead. Eleven victims were from one family. The mandatory minimum sentence would be life in prison. Punishment could include dishonorable discharge from the military, reduction to the lowest enlisted pay grade and loss of all pay and benefits. Bales is detained in the military's top-security prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, after he was flown out of Afghanistan despite demands by Afghan officials for a trial in an Afghan court. A military legal authority at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state, where Bales was stationed, must now decide whether to investigate the charges and to provide a recommendation on whether to proceed to trial. The killings sparked outrage from President Hamid Karzai's government in Kabul and fueled Afghan public opinion that was already inflamed in recent weeks over the apparently accidental burning of Korans by US military personnel at an Afghan base and the earlier leaked video of US Marines urinating on Afghan bodies. In the days after the Kandahar massacre, Karzai insisted that the United States speed up its total withdrawal from Afghanistan to 2013 instead of 2014, but US President Barack Obama vowed to stick to the current plan. The commander of international forces in Afghanistan, US General John Allen, told Congress Thursday that a “significant” number of combat troops would be needed there in 2013 despite growing calls to withdraw US forces more quickly. Bales' attorney, John Henry Browne, has previously defended several notorious clients including serial killer Ted Bundy. Browne has variously said his client could have been suffering post-traumatic stress disorder after serving his fourth combat tour overseas or from the effects of a 2010 concussion suffered when his vehicle rolled over in Iraq. Browne voiced scepticism over the evidence. A member of the Afghan parliamentary investigative panel told dpa recently that the shooting spree was the work of a team of US soldiers, not an individual. Lawmaker Naheem Lalai Hameedzai said a team of more than a dozen carried out the killings and burned the bodies. Although there are six US soldiers on death row, the last US execution of a soldier was in 1961. An execution would require approval by the president. The Afghan parliament in Kabul is urging Karzai to revoke an agreement that protects foreign troops in the country from facing legal proceedings in Afghanistan. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/aMXKL Tags: Afghanistan, Kandahar, Massacre, Murfer, Soldier Section: Central Asia, Human Rights, Latest News, North America
