Afghan Massacre: US Soldier Pleads Guilty

[Jazzy]

The US soldier charged with killing 16 Afghan civilians in two villages last year has admitted guilt to avoid the death penalty, and says the acts lacked "legal justification".

Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, 39, entered the plea in a military courtroom in Washington state on Wednesday.

As part of the deal he is giving a full accounting of the attacks to a military judge, who will decide whether to accept the guilty plea.

Bales told the judge he left his remote military base in southern Afghanistan and entered the two villages made of mud-walled compounds, where he "formed the intent" to kill the villagers.

He then shot each one, he said.

"This act was without legal justification, sir," Bales told the judge.

Bales has been facing a military court-martial trial on 16 counts of premeditated murder and other charges related to two 2012 overnight raids that left more than a dozen civilians, dead including 11 members of one family - many of them women and children.

Bales' lawyer, John Henry Browne, said last week that Bales would offer a guilty plea in exchange for prosecutors agreeing not to seek the death penalty.

Mr Browne said he expects his client to admit to "very specific facts" about the killings at Wednesday's hearing at Joint Base Lewis-McChord south of Seattle.

In a lengthy and graphic pre-trial hearing in November, witnesses testified that he appeared calm after being apprehended covered in his alleged victims' blood.

They said Bales did things and made statements that indicated he understood what he had done and the consequences of his actions.

No motive has emerged in the attacks.

The killing sparked protests in Afghanistan and forced the US military to temporarily halt combat operations.

Relatives of some of the victims told the Associated Press earlier this year that they would not accept a plea agreement that allowed Bales to escape the death penalty.

"For this one thing, we would kill 100 American soldiers," said Mohammed Wazir, who had 11 family members killed that night, including his mother and two-year-old daughter.

Lawyers for the married father of two have previously said he remembers little or nothing of the events.

Source

If anyone deserves the death penalty he does.

What do you think?

 

[Evil Eye]

If it makes the families happy, sure, I guess. Seems like a rather easy way out, especially so considering the comforts of death row, though.