Staff Sgt. Robert Bales Faces Murder Charges in Afghan Killings
KABUL, Afghanistan — Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was charged on Friday with 17 counts of premeditated murder and six counts of assault and attempted murder in connection with a March 11 attack on Afghan civilians, American forces in Afghanistan said.
If convicted of premeditated murder, Sergeant Bales could face the death penalty, according to the announcement, which also stated that a minimum penalty on the charge is a life sentence with the possibility of parole.
Afghan and American officials have said that Sergeant Bales, who is 38 and had been serving his fourth combat tour overseas, walked away from his remote base in southern Afghanistan and shot and stabbed members of several families in a nighttime ambush.
Afghan officials initially announced that 16 people were killed in the rampage; at least nine were children and some others were women. The Army has not suggested a motive. But the charges, which were announced in a six-paragraph statement Friday from United States forces, said Sergeant Bales was accused of killing 17 Afghan civilians. The statement did not include details of the crimes, and it did not account for the larger number of dead.
Afghan officials on Friday stuck to the initial death toll. None of the six people whom Sergeant Bales is accused of assaulting and attempting to murder had died from wounds sustained in the attack, though three remain hospitalized, said Zalmai Ayoubi, a spokesman for the government of Kandahar Province, where the killings took place.
Mr. Ayoubi spoke before the charges were formally announced — though after word had begun to spread that the charges were likely to include 17 counts of murder — and he could not say why the Americans had added another victim to the death toll.
Sergeant Bales is being held at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., though the statement saying he had been formally charged was released in Kabul. The statement said that was because American forces in Afghanistan had authority over the case until Friday, when the case formally entered the American military justice system.
Many in Afghanistan, including President Hamid Karzai, had called for Sergeant Bales to be tried by an Afghan court and were sharply critical of the American decision to spirit the soldier from the country and back to the United States in the days after the killings.
American officials have said that the United States, like all members of the coalition fighting in Afghanistan, has a deal with the Afghan government that stipulates its service members accused of crimes are to be tried by their own militaries.
There was no widespread Afghan reaction to the news that Sergeant Bales had been charged. Friday is a day off in Afghanistan, and the statement from American forces came around 11 p.m.. Much of Afghanistan had also been shut down since Tuesday for the celebration of Nowruz, the Persian new year holiday.
But Aimal Faizi, a spokesman for Mr. Karzai, said when reached by phone shortly after the announcement from American forces that "the people of Afghanistan want justice as soon as possible." He declined to answer questions about whether the Afghan government still wanted Sergeant Bales tried in Afghanistan.
Coalition officials said the American statement had to be timed with legal procedures in the United States. They did not elaborate.
John Henry Browne, a lawyer for the soldier, has said that Sergeant Bales did not remember some events at the time of the attack. Mr. Browne said in interviews this week that the sergeant had not sought or received treatment for a concussion he apparently suffered during a vehicle rollover in Iraq in a previous deployment.
"There's definitely brain injury, no question about it," Mr. Browne said.
Mr. Browne said Thursday that he expected the charges.
"I'm not persuaded by many facts," he said. "There's no crime scene. There's no DNA. There's no confession, although they're leaking something, which I don't believe until I see it. This is going to be a hard case for the government to prove. And my client can't help me a lot with some of the things because he has mental problems and I believe they're totally legitimate."
The attack, most likely the deadliest war crime by a single American soldier in the decade of war that has followed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has further frayed the relationship between the American and Afghan governments. Earlier this year United States military personnel burned Korans at an Afghan base, an act that prompted widespread public protests and a series of killings.
John R. Allen of the Marines, who commands the American-led allied forces in Afghanistan, told Congress this week that there would be an administrative investigation into the headquarters organization and the command of the sergeant's unit.
Sergeant Bales's legal proceedings could last years. He next faces an Article 32 hearing, in which the Army formally decides whether to press charges. If he is charged in an Article 32 hearing, he will most likely face a court-martial.
The sergeant has been based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, south of Tacoma, Wash., when he was not deployed overseas. Although Sergeant Bales is being held in Kansas, Mr. Browne said Thursday that he believed there was a strong chance legal proceedings in the future could take place at Lewis-McChord.
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