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Afghans react angrily to Bales sentence

Iran Press TV

Fri Jun 7, 2013 1:11AM GMT

Residents of Afghan villages in Kandahar province where a US trooper murdered many last year have reacted angrily after learning that he has escaped the death penalty.

The villagers have argued that he the sentence has been too "lenient" and he should be hanged.

"It is our firm demand that Afghanistan, the US and the international community condemn this American to death. He martyred our family members... and went back with his body full of blood of his victims to his camp,' bereaved villager Mullah said.

Villager Samiullah whose mother, uncle and cousin were killed in the rampage said "the criminal is not being punished." He added, 'We want him to be dealt with as his deeds deserve.'

On Wednesday, Judge Colonel Jeffery Nance ordered that Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, who admitted 16 counts of premeditated murder over the massacre in southern Afghanistan in March 2012, should spend the rest of his life behind bars without eligibility for parole.

Bales pleaded guilty to 'horrible' massacre in return for escaping the death penalty.

'I formed the intent to kill and then did kill by shooting with a firearm and burning her,' he read from a statement, which detailed each murder in the same wording, in a military courtroom at Joint Base Lewis-McChord south of Seattle in the US state of Washington.

Asked why he had killed the villagers, he said, 'Sir, as far as why, I've asked that question a million times since then. There's not a good reason in this world for why I did the horrible things I did.'

Bales had been charged with shooting or stabbing to death the Afghan civilians after walking off a US outpost in the Panjwai district of Kandahar Province in the early hours of March 11, 2012.

While the US Army insists that Bales acted alone, an Afghan fact-finding mission has found that the trooper was not the only perpetrator of the crime and that up to 20 US soldiers were involved in the carnage.

IA/HN