US soldier to face victims of Afghanistan massacre

JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Washington: The US soldier who killed 16 Afghan villagers during pre-dawn raids on two villages last year is expected to face several survivors and relatives of the dead who are outraged his life will be spared.
Robert Bales pleaded guilty in June to avoid capital punishment for killing the civilians, mostly women and children, on March 11, 2012. His sentencing hearing began late Tuesday.
The Army has flown nine villagers from Kandahar Province to testify. Several testified by video link from Afghanistan last year, including a young girl 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!" A man told of being shot in the neck at arm's length.
The villagers have not encountered Bales since the attack, nor have they heard him apologize.
Bales couldn't explain to a judge why he committed the killings. "There's not a good reason in this world for why I did the horrible things I did," he said.
He did not say he was sorry, but his lawyers hinted an apology might come at sentencing.
Prosecutors question whether he's remorseful. They asked a judge Monday for permission to play a recording of a phone call of Bales laughing with his wife as they review the charges against him. A lawyer for Bales said the recording clips were taken out of context.
Bales, on his fourth combat deployment, had been drinking and watching a movie with other soldiers at his remote post in Kandahar Province when he slipped away. Bales said he had also been taking steroids and snorting Valium.
Armed with a 9 mm pistol and an M-4 rifle, he attacked a village called Alkozai, then returned and woke up a fellow soldier to tell him about it. The soldier didn't believe Bales and went back to sleep. Bales left again to attack a second village known as Najiban.
The massacre prompted such angry protests that the US temporarily halted combat operations in Afghanistan, and it was three weeks before Army investigators could reach the crime scene.
Bales' attorneys have said they plan to present evidence that could warrant leniency, including his previous deployments and what they describe as his history of post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.
"Our general theme is that Sgt. Bales snapped," one of his civilian attorneys, John Henry Browne, said earlier. "That's kind of our mantra, and we say that because of all the things we know: the number of deployments, the head injuries, the PTSD, the drugs, the alcohol."
If he is sentenced to life with the possibility of parole, Bales would be eligible in 20 years, but there's no guarantee he'd receive it.