US soldier admits Afghan massacre....

...avoids death penalty.

Staff Sgt Robert Bales admits Afghan massacre
US soldier Robert Bales has avoided the death penalty for murdering 16 Afghan civilians last year, after a military judge accepted his guilty plea.
Bales earlier admitted killing the civilians, saying there was "not a good reason in this world" for the massacre.
He said he wandered away from a US outpost in Kandahar province and attacked two villages nearby in the early hours of 11 March 2012.
A jury must now decide if Bales's life term will include possible parole.
The sentencing hearing has been scheduled for 19 August.
The judge, as well as the commander of Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state, where the hearing has taken place, were required to approve any plea deal.
'Without justification'
At the start of the hearing on Wednesday, military judge Col Jeffery Nance asked Bales to describe why he thought he was guilty.
The soldier read from a statement describing each killing in the same terms:
"I left the VSP [Village Stability Platform] and went to the nearby village of Alkozai. While inside a compound in Alkozai, I observed a female I now know to be Na'ikmarga. I formed the intent to kill Na'ikmarga, and I did kill Na'ikmarga by shooting her with a firearm. This act was without legal justification, sir."
When asked why he committed the murders, Bales responded: "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."
Asked about burning the victims, Bales said he remembered a kerosene lantern in the room and recalled a fire and having matches in his pocket when he returned to the base, but not setting the bodies on fire.
When pressed whether he had set the bodies on fire, Bales said: "It's the only thing that makes sense, sir."
Bales's lawyers have said he is contrite about the killings.
Lawyer John Henry Browne described Bales as "crazed" and "broken" on the night of the attack.
At the time, Bales was serving his fourth tour of duty and had been drinking alcohol and snorting Valium.
In addition to the 16 murdered, six Afghans were injured.
Afghans unsatisfied
Seventeen victims were women or children, and many of them were shot in the head. Some of the bodies were piled up and burnt.
Bales's defence lawyers said they had determined the soldier would not be able to prove any claim of insanity or diminished capacity.
While prosecutors originally said they would seek the death penalty, no US service member has been executed in more than 50 years.
Family members of those killed earlier told the BBC they were outraged that he might not be put to death.
"We will not be satisfied unless he is executed," Haji Abdul Baqi, whose cousins were killed or injured in the attack, told BBC Afghan.
"If they don't execute him, they are showing their power. He martyred 16 of our people, but they are not executing the one person who did all that. Would they forgive us if we killed 16 Americans?"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22788987

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Reply 1

Dirac Delta Function

Original post by Dirac Delta Function

What the hell is a Village Stability Platform? It sounds like a euphemism for something that might look like this.

Spoiler

Reply 2

Ornlu

I support the use of the death penalty upon his cursed a***.

Reply 3

silent ninja

A butcherer gets away with a massacre.

Sends out a fantastic message to Afghans, reinforcing the fact they are worthless. There have been so many civilian attacks, children being stabbed by soldiers, and little more than token action taken against the perpetrators.

Can't serve justice but gonna teach those foreigners how to do it. Makes perfect sense.

Posted from TSR Mobile

'Merica, f*** yeah!

I wonder whether the Boston bomber who killed 2 people will get the death sentence.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Reply 6

anonstudent1

And this has/will receive next to no coverage compared to the Boston Bombing. And people wonder why we say the media and by extension us as a country place a much higher value on white/western life, then on a brown person from Afghanistan.

Reply 7

Aj12

Original post by silent ninja

Life in prison possibly without parole is your idea of getting away with it? You have some strange ideas of.justice....

Posted from TSR Mobile

Reply 8

xxxKINGxxx

Obviously the soldier is a lad cause he fought for their country. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a traitor and should leave their country.

Reply 9

Drewski

Original post by Aj12

Life in prison possibly without parole is your idea of getting away with it? You have some strange ideas of.justice....

Life in military prison.

He's going to wish he was dead.

Reply 10

The_Internet

Original post by xxxKINGxxx

Obviously the soldier is a lad cause he fought for their country. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a traitor and should leave their country.

Sorry? I'd happily be a "traitor" if it means caring about people's lives. Hello Goerring btw

Reply 11

bestofyou

Sad story really.

Poor guy just went through too much and lost it. A lot of people have breakdowns, sadly his was timed very bad.

Reply 12

Ornlu

Original post by bestofyou

Sad story really.

Poor guy just went through too much and lost it. A lot of people have breakdowns, sadly his was timed very bad.

Poor guy? Who cares if he broke down, it doesn't justify what he did. Maybe it may be considered a Naziesque policy, however I see nothing wrong in convicting (and maybe executing) those that are criminals and psychotic; why should we waste resources on looking after them when they are likely to remain disfunctional? It's just so much easier to discard people (in extreme cases) than to look after them.

Reply 13

Iqbal007

Well done america :rolleyes:

You flopped once again to bring justice..............its quite obvious what the consequence of this will be, its going to further fuel hatred and cause more people to want to join the Taliban, etc and more people will die.

Though it still doesn't excuse the lousy sentences other soldiers received for similar sorts of deaths a while ago, and they tried to censor the story in Afghanistan or Iraq I believe.........same thing is gonna happen.

Justice works both ways, properly and effectively with the harshest sentences, its hypocritical to apply it to one group but not apply it to those on your side. It just breeds hate.

Reply 14

bestofyou

Original post by Ornlu

And what part of my post did you interpret as this being justified or shouldn't be charged. Of course he should be sentenced. All I am saying is it was a sad story that all these people died and this guy is going to jail for the rest of his life because he did one tour too many.

Reply 15

Aj12

Original post by Umar1

I wonder whether the Boston bomber who killed 2 people will get the death sentence.

Posted from TSR Mobile

If he pleas guilty then unlikely. Considering a guilty plea got this guy life possibly without parole it's very likely he was facing the death penalty had he tried to fight the case.

Reply 16

Ornlu

Original post by bestofyou

Sorry for jumping to conclusions; I just lack sympathy for him so I assumed (incorrectly) the tone of what you were saying sounded too sympathetic towards him...

Reply 17

username1044970

Original post by silent ninja

How has he gotten away with it? He's going to spend the rest of his life in an American prison. Do you think he'll have a picnic there?

Reply 18

Drewski

It is curious, though, that the US serviceman who went on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood in 2009 (who's only just coming towards trial now) isn't being allowed to plead Not Guilty specifically so that he may yet face the death penalty.

Reply 19

Octohedral

Original post by Iqbal007

Well done america :rolleyes:

I completely agree, personally.

However, the counter-argument is that a person's trial should not be determined by the political consequences. However wrong it is, they cannot kill an American on American soil when he pleads guilty, simply because everyone wants him dead, when he would not have died otherwise, without severely contravening his right to a fair trial and destabilising the core of the constitution.

Of course, the counter-counter argument is all the foreigners who have died without any trial at all. I completely agree with you there. I'm simply explaining why the judge was not in a straightforward situation.