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Thread: Staff Sgt. Robert Bales Sentenced in Afghan Slayings

  1. #11
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    'It makes no sense': Wife believes husband who 'shot and killed 16 innocent Afghans' is innocent, she's raising defense funds and she insists he's 'a great dad'

    The gruesome details of her husband’s alleged rampage against a group of unarmed civilians in Kandahar province, Afghanistan has not stopped Kari Bales from supporting him unconditionally.

    Staff Sergeant Robert Bales is the sole suspect in the deaths of 16 Afghans after the March 11 mass shooting, and he is also charged with wrongfully possessing and using steroids and unlawfully consuming alcohol while deployed.

    Even though he reportedly admitted to the attacks when questioned by military officials following the shootings, his wife maintains that he would never do such a ‘horrible’ thing.

    She refuses to even ask about that tragic night for fear that their conversation may be bugged.

    Kari recently opened up about how difficult it has been for their family, visiting Robert at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas while he awaits his trial.

    She said that her husband of seven years is a mild-mannered, loving father to their two children and she cannot imagine him intentionally harming others like them during his military deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

    ‘He loved the kids over there. One time I sent him a teddy bear and Bob gave it to a little Iraqi girl. She loved it. His belief was that they were reaching the next generation, and that things (between the two countries) could get better,’ she told People magazine.

    As for their own children- their five-year-old daughter Quincy and their two-year-old son Bobby- they have only been able to see their father once since he was sent back to the U.S. following the incident.

    Since the military moved the Bales family from their home in Seattle to an Army base on the eve of his name being released following the mass shooting, Kari tells the magazine that she has done her best to make life as normal as possible for the children.

    While he isn’t there in person, Robert is even trying to help remind his children that he is there for them while he is locked in his cell thousands of miles away.

    She said that he signs his letters to them with an outline of his hand so that they can give him an imaginary high-five once they finish reading.

    ‘(He’s) caring, romantic. This Mother’s Day he sent me chocolate-covered strawberries even though he was in prison. He’s a great dad. He changed poopie diapers. He was my partner,’ she told the magazine.

    When they are together, their conversations stick to safe topics like the children and home life, and she admits that she has never asked him about that fateful March evening.

    While she maintains an extreme level of spousal devotion, his lawyers are preparing for a brutal legal battle.

    ‘The military is trying to put my client in front of the firing squad,’ Bales’ lawyer John Henry Browne said.

    Though his assessment was an exaggeration, it isn’t extremely far off as Bales does face the death penalty for the alleged crimes.

    Mr Browne has been known to handle controversial cases in the past, and two of his most infamous clients were the serial killer Ted Bundy and the teen ‘Barefoot Bandit’ who travelled cross country using stolen planes and cars.

    In this case, Mr Browne plans on exploring a defense based around the possibility that Bales was suffering from severe post traumatic stress disorder, which he believes contributed to his decision to kill the unarmed civilians.

    Though she says that the military has been very helpful throughout the whole process, the family is still struggling to make ends meet and Kari has set up a website that links to a fund for her husband's defense.

    She told journalist Matt Lauer that her husband did not display many of the typical symptoms of the disorder- which include nightmares, and erratic behavior shifts.

    As a result, Kari maintains that while she feels heartbroken for the families of the victims, she does not think her husband is responsible for the murders.

    Her sister Stephanie Tandberg told People that Kari’s devotion will stay consistent throughout the long legal ordeal.

    ‘This is an unbelievable situation. But Kari married Bob. Her vows were spoken. And she will follow those vows to the end,’ she said.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...great-dad.html
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  2. #12
    Banned TheKindExecutioner's Avatar
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    UNREAL! The Wiki page on him says he killed 17! SEVENTEEN in a matter of a few minutes! That includes 2 boys and 7 girls! That is a toll worse than most serial killers!

    THIS is why so much of the middle east and Islamic world hate us! I hate to say it but for the interest of justice this Bales should've been executed immediately!

  3. #13
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by TheKindExecutioner View Post
    UNREAL! The Wiki page on him says he killed 17! SEVENTEEN in a matter of a few minutes! That includes 2 boys and 7 girls! That is a toll worse than most serial killers!

    THIS is why so much of the middle east and Islamic world hate us! I hate to say it but for the interest of justice this Bales should've been executed immediately!
    Unfortunately, the US military is slower than the federal government and most states in executing murderers. There are men that have been on military death row (with absolutely no question as to their guilt) since 1984. Moreover, there have been no military executions since 1961.

  4. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by Moh View Post
    Unfortunately, the US military is slower than the federal government and most states in executing murderers. There are men that have been on military death row (with absolutely no question as to their guilt) since 1984. Moreover, there have been no military executions since 1961.
    The U.S. military is part of the federal government silly!

  5. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by TheKindExecutioner View Post
    The U.S. military is part of the federal government silly!
    The US Military has their own justice system silly. UCMJ or the wiki version
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    Senior Member Member RobertH's Avatar
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    And the President is the one that actually has to sign off on the execution.

  7. #17
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    Hearing in Afghan rampage case to be held in Washington state with testimony from Afghanistan

    A hearing for the soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians has been set for Nov. 5 at an Army base in Washington state, with villagers expected to testify by video from Kandahar Air Field in Afghanistan.

    Staff Sgt. Robert Bales is expected to appear at Joint Base Lewis-McChord for the pretrial hearing, which is expected to last two weeks, Lt. Col. Gary Dangerfield said. The second week of the hearing will be held in the evening so villagers can testify during daylight hours in Afghanistan.

    Defense lawyer John Henry Browne plans to fly to Afghanistan to cross-examine the witnesses, while other members of the defense team remain at Lewis-McChord, south of Seattle.

    The hearing under Article 32 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice will determine whether Bales, of Lake Tapps, Wash., faces court-martial.

    Bales faces 16 counts of premeditated murder; six counts of attempted murder; seven counts of assault; and one count each of possessing steroids, using steroids, destroying a laptop, burning bodies and using alcohol. He’s being held in the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

    Investigators say Bales was armed with a 9 mm pistol and M-4 rifle outfitted with a grenade launcher when he walked off his base in southern Afghanistan March 11 and went on a nighttime killing spree.

    Brown told The Seattle Times (http://bit.ly/Qhykl2) more than 10 Afghans could be called as witnesses, and some have been difficult to round up. Brown said the hearing is important because it may be his only opportunity to question them.

    Bales could face the death penalty if convicted.

    Bales deployed three times to Iraq before being sent to Afghanistan with the 3rd Stryker Brigade. He was at a Special Forces outpost at the time of the killings.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation...945_story.html
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  8. #18
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    Bales hearing: Afghan teenagers describe attack on their home

    Haji Mohammed Naim said an American soldier shot him in the neck at extremely close range.

    The shooter “was as close as this bottle,” he said, gesturing to a water bottle a few feet from his face.

    Naim said he woke up early on the night of a mass shooting in his village to the sound of barking dogs and gunfire. He figured Afghan National Army soldiers were preparing to search his village, Alkozai.

    Instead, an American with a rifle and a blinding flashlight on his weapon jumped a wall and appeared in his family compound, he testified tonight.

    “What are you doing?” Naim said he asked the American.

    Naim did not get a reply.

    Naim’s testimony concluded the fifth day of testimony in Staff Sgt. Robert Bales’ Article 32 hearing. It is scheduled to resume Saturday night with testimony from three children he allegedly wounded and three relatives of Bales’ reported victims.

    1:50 a.m. update: Two children of Haji Mohammed Naim woke up early March 11 with a neighbor’s wife screaming “He killed my man.”

    A chaotic and violent scene followed, with children screaming and running for cover from an American soldier armed with a rifle mounted with an intimidating flashlight, the brothers Sadiquallah and Quadratullah remembered in testimony piped into Joint Base Lewis-McChord tonight.

    They testified at an Army evidence hearing for Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, who is accused of murdering 16 Afghans and wounded six more. One of his alleged victims is known as Nazar Mohamed, the husband of the woman who ran into the brothers’ home wailing on the night of the massacre.

    Sadiquallah is a soft-spoken 13-year old who was shot in the ear on the night of the killings. He fidgeted through his testimony, and frequently looked down at the ground while he answered questions through an interpreter.

    He hid behind a curtain while the American soldier shot up his home, he said.

    “He came after me,” Sadiquallah said.

    Quadratullah is a year or so older than Sadiquallah. He escaped injury on March 11, but witnessed a neighbor’s grandmother being shot to death. He also saw at least one of his siblings being wounded.

    “We kept saying we are children, we are children,” Quadratullah remembered. “Then he shot, he shot one of the children.”

    Quadratullah spoke more confidently than his younger brother. He grabbed a neighbor’s motorcycle after the attack and alerted an older brother about the violence in their father’s home.

    The brother, Faizullah, gathered five wounded villagers at the house and took them to a nearby American forward base for medical care.

    In the morning, Quadratullah found footprints from what he assumed was the American soldier who attacked his home. They led back to an American outpost, he said.

    Both boys said they saw one American soldier that night. Quadratullah recognized that the soldier was an American because of his American combat pants and his weapon.

    Quadratullah said the American wore only a T-shirt on his torso, which corroborates testimony from U.S. soldiers who apprehended Bales at their outpost. It contradicts statements from two Afghan guards who saw an American walk into the base and and an American leave their camp. The Afghan guards said the man wore an armored vest that night.

    Haji Mohammed Naim, the boys’ father, is now testifying. He was shot in the neck on the night of the killings.

    11:05 p.m. update: Afghan gives chilling testimony of burned and bloodied corpses in his cousin’s home

    Tonight’s testimony from Kandahar took a nightmarish turn when a man who lost 11 relatives in a March 11 massacre described traveling to his cousin’s compound to find children with gunshot wounds in their heads and a pile of naked, burned corpses.

    “They were all shot in their heads,” Mullah Khamal Adin said. “Their brains were still on their pillows.”

    Khamal is a cousin to Mohammed Wazir, whose home in the village of Najiban was among the compounds Staff Sgt. Robert Bales allegedly attacked.

    Mohammed Wazir was not home during the killings. He was traveling in Spin Boldak with one of his sons. Wazir is in Mecca this week and is unlikely to testify. He lost six of his children in the killings.

    Khamal gave blunt and chilling testimony as he spoke to attorneys in Kandahar tonight, answering questions from lawyers at Joint Base Lewis-McChord and in Afghanistan.

    “This is my request: To give justice,” he told Army investigating officer Col. Lee Deneke.

    Khamal said villagers in Najiban called him on the morning of March 11, the morning of the massacre. He traveled there from the city of Kandahar to find a crowd of people gathered around his cousin’s home.

    He said he found the first body in the entrance to the home. It was Shatara, the wife of one of his uncles.

    “When I grabbed her, half of her head fell down and her eyes fell on the ground.”

    Khamal said he walked into another room, where he found the pile of bodies. They were no longer burning when he got there some time after 7 a.m., but he could smell smoke.

    Khamal noticed that some of the youngest victims appeared to have boot marks on their faces. He speculated that 2-year-old Palwasha was thrown on the fire while she was still alive.

    Prosecutors had Wazir estimate the ages of the 11 bodies he found in Naijiban. Seven were 15 or younger. Four were younger than 5.

    He separated the males from the females in the pile, and then took their bodies to Bales’ combat outpost – Village Stability Platform Belambay. There, villagers from Najiban protested the massacre before burying the bodies.

    Defense attorneys were gentle with Khamal. Bales’ lead attorney, John Henry Browne, began his questioning by saying, “I am sorry for your loss.”

    Defense attorney Maj. Gregory Malson asked Khamal to describe how many people moved through the Wazir family compound that day. Several were there, and Wazir gave his belongings to the villagers.

    Wazir “left everything behind and he has never come to the compound again.”

    Afghan testimony begins with some details lost in translation

    9:30 p.m. update: Afghan National Army guards assigned to a combat outpost with Staff Sgt. Robert Bales insisted they spotted one American soldier walking into their camp and one leave on the night the Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldier allegedly murdered 16 noncombatants and wounded six more.

    One guard said he heard an American soldier laughing as he walked out of their outpost about 2:30 a.m. on the night of the killings.

    Each guard said he tried to stop the soldier, but the American kept walking, using an Afghan phrase for “how are you?”

    “I was shocked,” said Pvt. Nematullah, the Afghan guard who said he spotted an American soldier walking into his camp about 12:30 a.m. on March 11. “Also I was nervous.”

    He and Pvt. Tosh Ali were the first Afghans to testify in Bales’ Article 32 evidence hearing over video teleconference link to Camp Nathan Smith in Kandahar.

    The hearing could shape a death-penalty court-martial for Bales, 39, and the Army is going to unusual lengths to gather evidence for the hearing. In coming days, several other Afghans – including ones whom Bales allegedly wounded – are scheduled to testify.

    The video link connects a courtroom at Lewis-McChord with the one in Kandahar, and it allows attorneys for the Army and for Bales to interact with witnesses.

    Both the prosecution and defense had attorneys in Kandahar to question the witnesses in person, including Bales’ lead defense attorney, John Henry Browne of Seattle.

    Col. Lee Deneke, an Army Reserve judicial officer, oversaw the hearing and interjected several times to clarify details while Nematullah and Toshi Ali spoke.

    Deneke sounded frustrated at times as defense attorneys and interpreters tried to discern facts from Afghan witnesses.

    The Afghans were consistent in describing the broad details of what they saw on the night of the killings, but some of the details they shared were lost in translation.

    Nematullah, for instance, said the soldier walked into Village Stability Platform from the north.

    That gibes with the Army’s allegation that Bales attacked two family compounds in the village of Alkozai, about 600 meters north of his base at Belambay, and then returned to his post before making his second assault that night in the village of Najiban.

    But defense attorneys confused Nematullah in asking him to describe the road that leads to Belambay. They said it runs east to west. Nematullah agreed, but insisted that the soldier he saw walked on the road from the north.

    Nematullah also gave conflicting testimony about his position that night, saying once that he was on the ground at the gate to Belambay and once that he was in a tower.

    He said he told the American to stop, but the American brushed by him. The American used an Afghan term that means “How are you?,” a response that confused the private.

    Later, Tosh Ali said he saw an American leave Belambay about 2:30 a.m. Tosh Ali said the soldier was armed and wearing an American uniform. Tosh Ali said the American was laughing as he walked out.

    Tosh Ali told the American to stop, but the armed American kept walking. Again, the American asked the guard “How are you?” in an Afghan tongue.

    Toshi Ali said he hear shots about half an hour after he saw the American leave the post. Najiban, the second village Bales allegedly attacked, is about 1,000 meters from Belambay.

    Both Afghan soldiers said the American they saw was wearing body armor, which contradicts previous testimony from U.S. soldiers who apprehended Bales at Belambay without his Kevlar vest.

    Bales has been in court all week with four days of testimony gathered from soldiers and criminal investigators at Lewis-McChord. His wife, Kari, has sat behind him each day.

    She and supporters have been taking notes. They appeared to smile a little when the Afghan witnesses contradicted themselves.

    The two courtrooms are about 7,000 miles apart. Last year, no Afghans except for ones on the U.S. payroll as interpreters testified in hearings for Lewis-McChord soldiers convicted of murdering three Afghans in Kandahar during their deployment there in 2010.

    Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/11/1...#storylink=cpy
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  9. #19
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    Preliminary hearing to end in U.S. soldier's case

    Attorneys will wrap up a preliminary hearing against Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, who is accused of massacring 16 Afghan villagers during a pre-dawn rampage earlier this year.

    Closing arguments from Army prosecutors and Bales' attorneys will be made Tuesday. In the coming weeks, the investigating officer, Col. Lee Deneke, will decide whether to recommend court-martial, with the ultimate decision to be made by Bales' brigade command. Bales, a 39-year-old father of two from Lake Tapps, Wash., could face the death penalty.

    If a court-martial takes place, it will be held at the Washington state base south of Seattle.

    Prosecutors say Bales slipped away from his base in Afghanistan to attack two villages in Kandahar province, killing 16 civilians, including nine children. The slayings drew such angry protests that the U.S. temporarily halted combat operations in Afghanistan, and it was three weeks before American investigators could reach the crime scenes.

    Three sessions of nighttime testimony in Bales' preliminary Article 32 hearing, scheduled to accommodate witnesses participating by video link from Afghanistan, concluded late Sunday. The witnesses included a 7-year-old girl, who described how she hid behind her father when a gunman came to their village that night, how the stranger fired, and how her father died, cursing in pain and anger.

    Earlier, the lead prosecutor, Lt. Col. Jay Morse, said on the night of the killings Bales watched a movie about a former CIA agent on a revenge killing spree, with two fellow soldiers, while drinking contraband whiskey. Morse said Bales first attacked one village, Alkozai; returned to the base at Camp Belambay, then headed out again to attack a second village, Najiban. Bales returned to the base covered in blood, Morse said, and his incriminating statements indicate he was "deliberate and methodical."

    Bales, 39, an Ohio native and father of two from Lake Tapps, Wash., has not entered a plea and was not expected to testify at the preliminary hearing. His attorneys have not discussed the evidence, but say he has post-traumatic stress disorder and suffered a concussive head injury while serving in Iraq.

    http://www.independentmail.com/news/...soldiers-case/
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  10. #20
    Banned TheKindExecutioner's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by RobertH View Post
    And the President is the one that actually has to sign off on the execution.
    Well Obama has said he is for the DP in rare cases like Clinton and other Dems are.

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