Robert Bales, Afghanistan Shooting Suspect, Split Killing Spree, Officials Say

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. investigators believe the U.S. soldier accused of killing 17 Afghan civilians split the slaughter into two episodes, returning to his base after the first attack and later slipping away to kill again, two American officials said Saturday.

This scenario seems to support the U.S. government's assertion — contested by some Afghans — that the killings were done by one person, since they would have been perpetrated over a longer period of time than assumed when Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was detained March 11 outside his base in southern Afghanistan.

But it also raises new questions about how Bales, who was formally charged Friday with 17 counts of premeditated murder and other crimes, could have carried out the nighttime attacks without drawing attention from any Americans on the Kandahar province base.

The two American officials who disclosed the investigators' finding spoke on condition of anonymity because the politically sensitive probe is ongoing.

Many details about the killings, including a possible motive, have not been made public. The documents released by the U.S. military Friday in connection with the murder charges do not include a timeline or a narrative of what is alleged to have happened.

Bales, 38, is accused of killing nine Afghan children and eight adults. The bodies were found in Balandi and Alkozai villages — one north and one south of the base, in Kandahar's Panjwai district.

Bales also was charged with six counts of attempted murder and six counts of assault in the same case.

U.S. investigators now believe that Bales walked off his base that night and killed several people in one of the villages, then went back to the base. The American officials, who are privy to some details of the investigation, said they do not know why Bales returned, how long he stayed or what he did while there.

He then slipped off the base a second time and killed civilians in the second village before again heading back toward the base. It was while he was returning the second time that a U.S. military search party spotted him. He is reported to have surrendered without a struggle.

Bales is being held in a military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

There have been previous suggestions that Bales could have returned to base after the first set of shootings, but the American officials who spoke to The Associated Press on Saturday provided the first official disclosure that U.S. investigators have come to this conclusion.

Members of the Afghan delegation investigating the killings said one Afghan guard working from midnight to 2 a.m. on March 11 saw a U.S. soldier return to the base around 1:30 a.m. Another Afghan soldier who replaced the first and worked until 4 a.m. said he saw a U.S. soldier leave the base at 2:30 a.m. It's unknown whether the two Afghan guards saw the same U.S. soldier.

U.S. officials have said Bales left the base the first time armed with his 9mm pistol and M-4 rifle, which was outfitted with a grenade launcher.

Bales' civilian attorney, John Henry Browne, said Friday that he believes the government will have a hard time proving its case and that his client's mental state will become an important issue. Browne has said Bales suffered from the stress of serving four combat tours.

The decision to charge Bales with premeditated murder suggests that prosecutors believe they have sufficient evidence that he consciously conceived the killings.

The maximum punishment for a premeditated murder conviction is death. The mandatory minimum sentence is life imprisonment with the chance of parole.

Associated Press writer Deb Riechmann in Kabul contributed to this report.

Robert Burns can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/robertburnsAP

.

Comments

[slybarbara]

03:02 PM on 03/27/2012

As to how he attacked two villages in this one-man rampage is not so hard to believe. He returned the first time to the base, was recognized by soldiers there and mentioned having just killed some "military-aged" Afgans, left AGAIN and no doubt went to the other village, which was some distance from the first. Not so hard to believe, except why return to the base at all? Probably to get more ammo. . The Post already knew it was him, because they took a head-count on his first leave-taking and knew it.. Pretty solid circumstantial evidence to link him to the crime, as no one else was out that morning, else they would have been detected by the guards. It all seems to have been cooly planned; so we can throw out the "mentally ill" and "traumatized" defenses of his lawyer, Browne. PTSD is a handy excuse, but it doesn't "make you do anything," it's just a symtom. Everyone is responsible for his own actions. You can't pin it on handy excuses like being traumatized by this or that. I doubt any jury is going to excuse him for "mitigating" factors, other than not give him the death penalty, which has not been used by the Army since 1961. Once out of Afghanistan they've got to put him away out of sight. Anyway, the Army will be out of Afghanistan by 2014, and they can leave another destroyed country behind them. .
Slybarbara

[paulfiquet]

09:06 AM on 03/26/2012

my own opinion and that s all it is...I cant hardly see how one man could have done it alone..and exited out ot the compound twice without notice .???? it smells .......

[muck-raker]

08:23 AM on 03/26/2012

Glenn Greenwald in Salon:

Think about that: if you expose to the world previously unknown evidence of widespread wanton killing of civilians (as Manning allegedly did), then you will end up in the same place as someone who actually engages in the mass wanton killing of civilians (as Bales allegedly did), except that the one who committed atrocities will receive better treatment than the one who exposed them. That’s a nice reflection of our government’s value system (similar to the way that high government officials who commit egregious crimes are immunized, while those who expose them are aggressively prosecuted). If the chat logs are to be believed, Manning decided to leak those documents because they revealed heinous war crimes that he could no longer in good conscience allow to be concealed, and he will now find himself next to a soldier who is accused of committing heinous war crimes.

Read more

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/truthdigger_of_the_week_glenn_greenwald_20120323/

[muck-raker]

08:18 AM on 03/26/2012

A Decade After 9/11: We Are What We Loathe

By Chris Hedges

The dead in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania were used to sanctify the state’s lust for war. To question the rush to war became to dishonor our martyrs. Those of us who knew that the attacks were rooted in the long night of humiliation and suffering inflicted by Israel on the Palestinians, the imposition of our military bases in the Middle East and in the brutal Arab dictatorships that we funded and supported became apostates. We became defenders of the indefensible. We were apologists, as Christopher Hitchens shouted at me on a stage in Berkeley, “for suicide bombers.”

We were deluged with painful stories of the survivors and victims. The deaths and falling towers became iconographic. The ceremonies of remembrance were skillfully hijacked by the purveyors of war and hatred. They became vehicles to justify doing to others what had been done to us. And as innocents died here, soon other innocents began to die in the Muslim world. A life for a life. Murder for murder. Death for death. Terror for terror.

HOW did we come to this place in time? read on: http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/nationalism_in_the_aftermath_of_9_11_20110910/

[muck-raker]

08:02 AM on 03/26/2012

“Sergeant Massacre” left his base and singlehandedly perpetrated the My Lai of the Afghan War, shooting and evidently in some cases stabbing to death 16 Afghan villagers, including nine children, reported that a NATO air strike had killed three civilians Mistaken for insurgents, two shopkeepers had, he claimed, died on the spot, as had an elderly man later. A NATO spokesman responded that dead were, in fact, insurgents, though “additional information” on those deaths was being collected.

Since then, while the media has been filled with discussion of the until recently unidentified sergeant’s atrocity and what it means for America’s war in Afghanistan, those other dead Afghans have typically faded into obscurity. There have been no further reports on what happened to them, nor, as far as we know, has one of the scores of U.S. and NATO “investigations” so-thorough-they-never-manage-to-see-the-light-of-day been launched. But those three contested deaths, not the sergeant’s grim, up-close-and-personal slaughter, best catch the nature of America’s Afghan War, ever since in December 2001 a B-52 and two B-1B bombers took out 110 of 112 Afghan villagers celebrating a wedding. Though the sergeant’s acts have been headlined, Afghans have been dying, largely unnoticed here, for a long while now. The truth is this: from the air and on the ground, Americans have been profligate with Afghan lives.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175517/tomgram%3A_karen_greenberg%2C_a_new_age_of_enemies/

[dd35-scot]

05:56 AM on 03/26/2012

Two things which needs to be asked is this.How is it possible for the guy to have left the military base without being noticed by the guards on that base and how was it possible for him to draw arms to go on the rampage as alleged?
Being ex military myself (1970-1979) you would have to hand in your weapons to the armoury at the end of a patrol and also you would have to give an account of any rounds fired.

[Rachetwench]

05:36 AM on 03/26/2012

The more the media reports on this issue, the less it seems to make sense. Just sayin'.

[Not2Normal]

05:30 AM on 03/26/2012

This just my opinion, but 4 tours of duty do not in any way excuse what the soldier is alleged to have done. I have family members tht have done more tours and had friends blow up near them, but didn't go and massacre women and children. Using this as an excuse will make people fear the men and women returning from war.

[dngrwill]

11:31 AM on 03/27/2012

Did your family members have 'line' duty? I can't pretend to know how a sane person reacts to the situation in Afghanistan.

[Not2Normal]

06:56 PM on 03/27/2012

Yes, my son. He came home the last time with a big infected gash in his leg. All my family are military and have served during war.

[pbirch3074]

02:11 AM on 03/26/2012

How is it possible for any soldier to go off base, alone, at night in a combat zone? Just plain bizarre.

[slybarbara]

01:36 AM on 03/26/2012

By paying victims of the Afghan Massacre a total of $860,000 in "blood-money" or "reparations" is an indication the U.S. accepts responsibily for the killings by one of its own, otherwise there would be no reason to do so, would there? Some people have said Washington did so because they "wanted to." Duh. That $860,000 is going to weigh on Sgt Bale's future as the guilty party, as the ONLY party being held accountable for the killings. Unless Mr. Browne wants to pay it all back! The Army must have felt some relief that Washington was, in part, buying off the Afghanis and removing some pressure from Kabul for the lack of control Karzai felt the Army displayed in the slow (for them) investigation and revealment of the killer. Now that Bales is out of the way in a Stateside Maximum security prison, they can put him aside as a thorn in THEIR side! The trial will take place in the U.S., and not be finished until after the 2014 pull-out of U.S. troops. More relief.
Everyone is partially satisfied except Bale's wife, who states on TV her husband could never have commited such a crime. Too bad her belief in him will not pardon her husband from his crimes. Just more media jabber.
Slybarbara

[plansmaker]

01:16 AM on 03/26/2012

Death Penalty won't bring back the dead children and women.
Think!...If a Muslim solider/ gunman killed 17 unarmed American children and women in their homes, what should the justice be for such horrific crimes.

[Rich Cash]

02:08 AM on 03/26/2012

What "should" it be? Death, of course. What "would" it be? Years of legally wrangling, and ultimately a life sentance in maximum security prison with a chance for parole after serving 25 years or so.

[wayne123]

01:02 AM on 03/26/2012

The investigation hasn't been completed and they are all ready calling him guilty. So much for unbias and getting a fair trial.

[dd35-scot]

05:59 AM on 03/26/2012

I totally agree with you.Even after he has been put on trial I reckon we will never be allowed to know the full story.

[wayne123]

07:10 AM on 03/26/2012

Our govt has always lied to the American people about things in every war, so yes i don't expect them to ever tell the truth.

[slybarbara]

09:18 PM on 03/25/2012

The notion that more than one soldier was involved in the Afghan Massacre is becoming prevalent, if only because it surfaced from Karzai's claim "one soldier couldn't do it." Why not? Just to argue the case. Bales, simply, as in a carnival shooting gallery, shot anything that popped up. Sort of a sick arcade game. The villagers saw only one shooter and the Army itself tracked Bales by first a "head-count" at the base then catching him returning from his last episode, gun in hand, "giving up," as it were. The Army would prefer that there be only one soldier involved, otherwise it would be dealing with a base-wide conspiracy that would be harder to explain away. Army prosecutors must have been jumping with glee when they heard Browne was appointed as Defense attorney counting on a drawn-out trial that would outlast the egress of the U.S. Army in 2014, when they could steam-roller Bales and Browne into the ground, for lack of any coherent defense. They could convict Bales on any conditon, it wouldn't matter, then put him away someplace for life, since they couldn't execute him--haven't executed anyone since 1961, and evidence will be weak unless Bales coughs up the truth. The die is already cast--the Army hasn't the guts to fight any public outcry that might occur out of sympathy for the poor soldier who was only a victim caught up in the Army's own confabulaton of PTSD--
Slybarbara

[realitytrumpsbull]

10:58 PM on 03/25/2012

There's 'defense', and there's premeditated murder during a foreign occupation. Ultimately, the US Army's going to have to carry the responsibility for Bales' actions, in more ways than one, including looking much more critically at who they're putting in a uniform to start with. Why did he do it, or why did THEY do it, if there was more than one person involved? Why, why, why. And, what's it like to be on the receiving end of hostility and violence from the local populace that pretty much more than anything wants YOU to leave, for prolonged periods of time, how many mortars or incoming bullets does it take before anyone might be motivated to acts of revenge, which is apparently what happened here? But, whatever. Troops home.

[mrluckyman]

11:07 PM on 03/25/2012

"Bales, simply, as in a carnival shooting gallery, shot anything that popped up. Sort of a sick arcade game.".....................Popped up? His victims were mostly children and women who were fast asleep in their homes. He went looking to kill, nothing popped up in front of him, Seventeen people killed and others wounded, he is a father and killed children while they slept at night. He will never have a life again, even if he doesnt get the death penalty, he will spend most of his life behind bars. Not quite sure why he gets any options, he didnt give his victims any. My heart goes out to his family, this must be a nightmare for all of them, just like the nightmare he caused for so many others.....

[wayne123]

01:10 AM on 03/26/2012

If convicted but not one witness can identify him as the shooter. I may have killed women and children in nam, i honestly don't know all i killed in battle but their side used women and children. We don't know if those he killed were Al Quaida, if so then i have no sympathy for them. They would be the enemy.

[Heyman]

07:54 PM on 03/25/2012

Mainstream Media failed on this story. There were MANY soldiers participating in this massive killing. And rapes.
Alternative news is where you get the truth.
Numerous witnesses claim drunken soldiers, raped and killed villagers. Two villages. At about the same time. Many miles apart. One guy, just couldn't do it.
MSM will make an appoint to blame one soldier. What's ironic? We're going to be left in the dark, relying on United States media. Look outside this country. The Guardian of London has some real news about the atrocity that day. And they're saying multiple soldiers were involved.

[Jes from Kemah]

08:17 PM on 03/25/2012

State your source then.

[DeceptionIsReality]

10:38 PM on 03/25/2012

I have read the same thing in foreign news sources as well. The father of the slain doesn't believe it was one shooter either.

[realitytrumpsbull]

11:01 PM on 03/25/2012

Not by what I read. More hype.

[Smoking and Starving]

09:07 PM on 03/25/2012

they weren't 'many miles' apart, jesus people, research, pull up google maps and look for yourself. Unbelievable.

[DeceptionIsReality]

10:43 PM on 03/25/2012

You can find those villages on google maps?

[MolliBlum]

02:24 AM on 03/26/2012

“...Sgt Robert Bales, is said to have broken into three homes in three different locations in Panjwai district - the villages of Alkozai and Najeeban and another settlement known locally as "Ibrahim Khan Houses...
...Initial reports said that Sgt Bales simply walked to the villages, which were located about 500 (546 yds) from the military base in Panjwai district.
But local journalists say that the villages of Najeeban and Alkozai are about 5-7km (3-4 miles) apart. This immediately raises questions about accounts which said he completed his deadly circuit on foot.”

(The article includes a map):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-17334643

[slybarbara]

07:01 PM on 03/25/2012

Without a clear-cut motifve by Sgt Bales, for his alleged involvement in the Afghan Massacre (as it is beome to being known as), the Army has little to go on, since Bales himself, while admitting to leaving the base for unknown reasons, claims to be unable to remember anything between the time he left the base, and the time he returned. Only Bales can dissipate this "haze." Mr. Browne, Bales attorney, is flip-flopping on his own reasons for Bale's activities.
At first Browne denied Bales was even there. The Army couldn't prove it. Then he implicitly admits it by presenting the theory of "mental illness" for his actions. "Mental illness" is another term for PTSD, without saying so. However, that is rather weak, as the so-called PTSD victims don't go around murdering their neighbors. Being "mentally incompetent" is also rather weak, as the alleged activities of Sgt Bales seem to have been cooly carried out, even if we dont understand why he burned the bodies of the children to hide the "stab-wounds."
This is suggesting he had a bayonet. Now, to my observation, I have never seen a U.S. soldier with an M-16 or M-4 in combat photos with an attached bayonet. That is WWI stuff.
Soldiers these days would prefer to spray the landscape at a distance with bullets, hoping to hit something, rather than to actually come in contact with the enemy.
Slybarbara

[DeceptionIsReality]

10:28 PM on 03/25/2012

Let's clear this up right now. Bales is presumed innocent until proven guilty. It is the military prosecution that must make the case that Bales committed these acts. It is not on Bales or his attorney to prove his innocence.

[slybarbara]

11:48 PM on 03/25/2012

Wrong. Bale's attorney is defending Bales to prove his innocence. At the same time the Army prosecution is trying to prove his guilt. Whoever has the most compeling case convinces the jury to either convict or acquit. That's the rule of law.
Where were you brought up? In some Totalitarian regime where the person is assumed guilty without a trial?
Slybarbara

[wayne123]

01:15 AM on 03/26/2012

I agree but the military is already saying he is guilty in these headlines. So much for a fair trial.

[realitytrumpsbull]

11:04 PM on 03/25/2012

Well, could well be he was somehow mentally affected during his rampage, but, does being out of your mind excuse your behavior, 'not guilty, by reason of insanity'? I don't care what mental state you're in, you still ran that lady's dog over, and if you're that far gone upstairs, then you shouldn't be driving, period. And, having loaded firearms under your direct control while overseas under hostile conditions is arguably a more challenging situation than driving down the highwy, and requires of such persons that they be fairly well-acquainted with what's going between their own ears, and whether or not they're fit for duty. If he was under sufficient stress and pressure as to cause him to be mentally affected, as an SSG he should have understood his own signs and symptoms and gone and talked to his commander. But, did not.