Staff Sgt. Robert Bales Faces Murder Charges in Afghan Killings
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 was made by American officials in Kabul.
Afghan and American officials have said that Sergeant Bales, a 38-year-old soldier from Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State serving his fourth combat tour overseas, walked away from his remote outpost in southern Afghanistan and shot and stabbed members of several families in a nighttime ambush. Many officials initially said that 16 people were killed in the rampage; at least 9 were children and others were women. But the military said Friday that Sergeant Bales was accused of killing 17 Afghan civilians.
Afghan officials on Friday, however, 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.
The deaths were listed individually in a spare charge sheet that redacted the names of victims and provided no narrative description of how the attack took place other than to locate the alleged crimes "at or near Belambay, Afghanistan, on or about 11 March 2012." In two cases, no victim name appears to have been listed.
Multiple reports have said that Sergeant Bales also stabbed and set fire to some victims, but the charge sheet says only that the dead were killed by a firearm. It also does not specify which of the murder victims were children.
Eric S. Montalvo, a private lawyer involved in many military cases, including the recent defense of one of the "kill team" defendants at Lewis-McChord, said the brevity of the charge sheet does not necessarily mean the Army does not believe other crimes were committed.
"What they've been getting in trouble with is overcharging the case and having to backpedal," said Mr. Montalvo, whose client in the kill team case was charged with murder but pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the 2010 killings of Afghan civilians. "There's no rush to pack the charge sheet at this point. They can let the Article 32 investigation come up with additional facts."
The completion of an Article 32, in which the Army broadens its investigation and formally decides on charges, could be several months away. Sergeant Bales is being held at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., but the Army said Friday that future legal proceedings would take place at Lewis-McChord.
The charge sheet did not address how the Army concluded Sergeant Bales acted with premeditation. John Henry Browne, a lawyer for Sergeant Bales, has said his client cannot remember some of the 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.
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