US Soldier Gets Life Sentence Without Parole in Killing of 16 Afghans
August 23, 2013
by VOA News
A U.S. Army sergeant who massacred 16 Afghan civilians last year has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
A six-member jury at a military base in the western state of Washington returned its sentence Friday against Sergeant Robert Bales after deliberating for less than two hours.
The 40-year-old Bales was on his fourth combat deployment when he carried out the middle-of-the-night attack in March 2012.
In what came to be known as the Kandahar Massacre, Bales walked by himself to two neighboring villages in Kandahar province and fired on local residents with a pistol and a rifle. Nine children and four women were among the 16 he killed.
He pleaded guilty in June to the killings in a deal with military prosecutors to avoid the death penalty. The jury had been deliberating whether Bales should have the chance of being paroled at some point and decided against that possibility.
Bales took the witness stand on Thursday and apologized. He called the killings an "act of cowardice." He told the judge presiding over the case that "there is not a good reason in the world for the horrible things I did."
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
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