凍結 天然氣 火車

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U.S. Sergeant Is Said to Kill 16 Civilians in Afghanistan

PANJWAI, Afghanistan — Stalking from home to home, a United States Army sergeant methodically killed at least 16 civilians, 9 of them children, in a rural stretch of southern Afghanistan early on Sunday, igniting fears of a new wave of anti-American hostility, Afghan and American officials said.

Residents of three villages in the Panjwai district of Kandahar Province described a terrifying string of attacks in which the soldier, who had walked more than a mile from his base, tried door after door, eventually breaking in to kill within three separate houses. At the first, the man gathered 11 bodies, including those of four girls younger than 6, and set fire to them, villagers said.

Coming after a period of deepening public outrage, spurred by the Koran burning by American personnel last month and an earlier video showing American Marines urinating on dead militants, the apparently unprovoked killings added to a feeling of siege here among Western personnel. Officials described a growing sense of concern over a cascading series of missteps and offenses that has cast doubt on the ability of NATO personnel to carry out their mission and has left troops and trainers increasingly vulnerable to violence by Afghans seeking revenge.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack, calling it in a statement an “inhuman and intentional act” and demanding justice. Both President Obama and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta called Mr. Karzai, expressing condolences and promising thorough investigations. “This incident is tragic and shocking, and does not represent the exceptional character of our military and the respect that the United States has for the people of Afghanistan,” Mr. Obama said in a statement.

American officials in Kabul were scrambling to understand what had happened, and appealed for calm, at a moment when the United States and Afghanistan are in tense negotiations on the terms of the long-term American presence in the country.

The officials gave no details about the suspected killer other than to describe him as an Army staff sergeant who was acting alone and who had surrendered himself for arrest. “The initial reporting that we have at this time indicates there was one shooter, and we have one man in custody,” said Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings, a NATO spokesman.

A senior American military official said Sunday evening that the sergeant was attached to a unit based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, near Tacoma, Wash., and that he had been part of what is called a village stabilization operation in Afghanistan. In those operations, teams of Green Berets, supported by other soldiers, try to develop close ties with village elders, organize local police units and track down Taliban leaders. The official said the sergeant was not a Green Beret himself, and had been deployed to either Iraq or Afghanistan at least once before his current tour of duty.

In Panjwai, a reporter for The New York Times who inspected bodies that had been taken to the nearby American military base counted 16 dead, and saw burns on some of the children’s legs and heads. “All the family members were killed, the dead put in a room, and blankets were put over the corpses and they were burned,” said Anar Gula, an elderly neighbor who rushed to the house after the soldier had left. “We put out the fire.”

The villagers also brought some of the burned blankets on motorbikes to display at the base, Camp Belambay, in Kandahar, and show that the bodies had been set alight. Soon, more than 300 people had gathered outside to protest.

At least five other Afghans were wounded in the attacks, officials said, some of them seriously, indicating the death toll could rise. NATO said several casualties were being treated at a military hospital.

One of the survivors from the attack, Abdul Hadi, 40, said he was at home when a soldier broke down the door.

“My father went out to find out what was happening, and he was killed,” he said. “I was trying to go out and find out about the shooting, but someone told me not to move, and I was covered by the women in my family in my room, so that is why I survived.”

Mr. Hadi said there was more than one soldier involved in the attack, and at least five other villagers described seeing a number of soldiers, and also a helicopter and flares at the scene. But that claim was unconfirmed — other Afghan residents described seeing only one gunman — and it was unclear whether extra troops had been sent out to the village after the attack to catch the suspect.

In a measure of the mounting levels of mistrust between Afghans and the coalition, however, many Afghans, including lawmakers and other officials, said they believed that the attack had been planned and were incredulous that one American soldier could have carried out such an attack without help. In his statement, Mr. Karzai said “American forces” had entered the houses in Panjwai, but at another point he said the killings were the act of an individual soldier.

Others called for calm. Abdul Hadi Arghandihwal, the minister of economy and the leader of Hezb-e-Islami, a major Afghan political party with Islamist leanings, said there would probably be new protests. But he said the killings should be seen as the act of an individual and not of the United States.

“It is not the decision of the Army officer to order somebody to do something like this,” he said. “Probably there are going to be many demonstrations, but it will not change the decisions of our government about our relationship with the United States.”

Elsewhere, news of the killings was spreading only slowly. Other than the protest at the base in Kandahar, there were no immediate signs of the fury that fueled rioting across the country after the burning of Korans by American military personnel in February.

Both the United States Embassy in Kabul, which immediately urged caution among Americans traveling or living in Afghanistan, and the military coalition rushed to head off any further outrage, deploring the attack, offering condolences for the families and promising the soldier would be brought to justice. Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, the NATO spokesman, expressed his “deep sadness” and said that while the motive for the attack was not yet clear, it looked like an isolated episode.

“I am not linking this to the recent incidents over the recent days and weeks,” he said. “It looks very much like an individual act. We have to look into the background behind it.”

Adding to the sense of concern, the killings came two days after an episode in Kapisa Province, in eastern Afghanistan, in which NATO helicopters apparently hunting Taliban insurgents instead fired on civilians, killing four and wounding another three, Afghan officials said. About 1,200 demonstrators marched in protest in Kapisa on Saturday.

The quick American move on Sunday to detain the gunman could help to avoid a repeat of last month’s unrest. The reaction to the Koran-burning case revealed a huge cultural gap between the Americans, who saw it as an unfortunate mistake, and the Afghans, who viewed it as a crime and wanted to see those responsible tried as criminals.

Both the Afghans and Americans agreed on the severity of Sunday’s killings, and General Jacobson said the case would be aggressively pursued by American legal authorities.

It was less clear how the attack would affect the talks between Kabul and Washington, known as strategic partnership talks, which will define the American presence and role in the country after the drawdown of combat troops. The upheaval provoked by the Koran burnings led to a near-breakdown in those talks, but they appeared tentatively back on track after a deal struck on Friday for the Afghans to assume control of the main coalition prison in six months.

The strategic partnership talks must still address differences over the American campaign of night raids on Afghan houses. The attack on Sunday may complicate that issue, because it bore some similarities to the night raids carried out by coalition forces in Afghanistan.

The shootings also carried some echoes of an attack in March 2007 in eastern Afghanistan, when several Marines opened fire with automatic weapons, killing as many as 19 civilians after a suicide car bomb struck the Marines’ convoy, wounding one Marine.

Panjwai, a rural suburb of Kandahar, was traditionally a Taliban stronghold. It was a focus of the United States military offensive in 2010 and was the scene of heavy fighting. In recent weeks, two American soldiers were killed by small-arms fire on the same day, March 1, in the area, and three died in a roadside bomb attack in February.

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Afghan shooter said to be American enlisted soldier

March 11, 2012 | 11:28 am

REPORTING FROM WASHINGTON AND KABUL -- A U.S. serviceman who went on a house-to-house shooting rampage in a rural Kandahar hamlet, killing 16 people as they slept Sunday, is an enlisted soldier who acted alone, according to a senior U.S. military officer.

The soldier is in custody after returning to his base and Army investigators are at the base.

It was not immediately clear what military unit the soldier was assigned to. The major U.S. Army unit in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province, where the killings occurred, is 1st Stryker Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division, according to the military. But there are also several other smaller units assigned to the area.

"This was not part of a night raid or any operation," the senior officer said. "All the signs point to a lone person acting alone."

He refused to discuss a possible motive for the killings or to identify the soldier's unit.

The shootings took place early Sunday in Panjwai district outside Kandahar city, in a village called Alkozai. U.S. military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was believed that the assailant had suffered a mental breakdown. Most of those killed were women and children.

President Obama, in a statement, expressed "condolences to the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives, and to the people of Afghanistan, who have endured too much violence and suffering. This incident is tragic and shocking, and does not represent the exceptional character of our military and the respect that the United States has for the people of Afghanistan."

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Shooting raises questions about U.S. course in Afghanistan

Missy Ryan Reuters

5:17 p.m. CDT, March 11, 2012

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. soldier's shooting of more than a dozen Afghan civilians deepened questions on Sunday about what the United States can accomplish in Afghanistan before it withdraws, as Washington rushed to contain the damage from the startling rogue attack.

President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta spoke to Afghan President Hamid Karzai by telephone and offered condolences for the attack, in which a U.S. soldier left his base in southern Afghanistan and began a middle-of-the-night shooting spree that local officials said killed 16 civilians, including nine children and three women.

"This incident is tragic and shocking," Obama said in a statement.

Reports of the attack remain confused. U.S. officials say only one soldier was involved, while villagers and other Afghans said it was a group of soldiers. But the Obama administration vowed a rapid investigation and promised to hold whoever was behind the violence fully responsible.

While U.S. officials rushed to draw a line between the rogue shooting and the ongoing efforts of a U.S. force of around 90,000, the incident is sure to infuriate Afghans already suspicious of a Western military presence now over a decade old.

It may also provide ammunition to those in Washington advocating for an accelerated exit from a long, costly and inconclusive war.

Last month, the burning of copies of the Koran on a NATO military base triggered violent protests across the country and a spate of insider attacks against Western soldiers.

Sunday's attack may also harden a growing consensus in Washington that, despite a troop surge, a war bill exceeding $500 billion and nearly 2,000 U.S. lives lost, prospects are dimming for what the United States can accomplish in Afghanistan before it pulls most troops out by the end of 2014.

Obama's surge of 33,000 troops has beaten the Taliban back from some areas of Afghanistan's south, but serious doubts remain about whether an inexperienced local military and wobbly central government can keep a resilient insurgency at bay.

"These killings only serve to reinforce the mindset that the whole war is broken and that there's little we can do about it beyond trying to cut our losses and leave," said Joshua Foust, a security expert with the American Security Project.

If the incident triggers retaliatory violence against Western troops, it may well help shape ongoing deliberations within the Obama administration about how quickly U.S. soldiers should be withdrawn, possibly strengthening the case of those surrounding the president who back a more decisive drawdown.

Obama and other NATO leaders are expected to define their plans for gradually trimming Western forces and putting Afghan troops in charge of security when they meet at a NATO summit in Chicago in May.

Most Western combat troops are expected to be gone by the end of 2014, but some U.S. soldiers could remain beyond then, likely focusing on targeted strikes on militants and supporting local forces, who will need outside help for years to come.

"This is terrible timing for people who either want to stay through 2014 or even extend the U.S. presence there," Foust said. "Though the overall number of (similar) incidents remains pretty low, there is a broad and growing perception that now both sides are dysfunctional and committing murder, or the house of cards is falling."

In a post on Twitter, Pentagon spokesman George Little said the incident would not change the U.S. mission. "The recent tragedy in Afghanistan will not deter us from pursuing our fundamental strategy. We've come too far with our Afghan partners."

COMPLICATING BILATERAL TALKS, CAMPAIGN NARRATIVE?

As Karzai demands an explanation for what he called 'intentional murders,' Sunday's shooting may dispel the good will created by an agreement reached on Friday on control over military prisons in Afghanistan, which had been one of the remaining stumbling blocks to reaching a deal governing future U.S.-Afghan ties.

Andrew Exum, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and former Army Ranger, said the shootings come at a sensitive time in negotiations on that deal, which the White House wanted to unveil by the May summit.

"One wonders whether or not internal political pressures in Afghanistan will constrain the options of Afghan negotiators on subjects ranging from U.S. basing rights to night raids," Exum said.

The shootings may complicate things for Obama ahead of November's presidential election.

While jobs and the economy will likely remain the focus of the presidential race, the White House has hoped to point to a series of foreign policy successes, such as the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, to shore up Obama's support.

The recent tumult in Afghanistan may increase the pressure Obama faces in coming months from fellow Democrats who favor a more rapid drawdown.

While many Republicans have warned against pulling out too quickly, conservative presidential candidate Newt Gingrich voiced a very different view.

"There's something profoundly wrong with the way we're approaching the whole region and I think it's going to get substantially worse, not better. And I think that we're risking the lives of young men and women in a mission that may frankly not be doable," Gingrich said on "Fox News Sunday."

He said Washington should consider pulling out of Afghanistan and reconsider its role in the entire region.

"I understand the anger and the sorrow," said John McCain, the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, who like many other Republicans has warned a hasty withdrawal will undermine U.S. security in the long run.

"I also understand that we should not forget that the attacks on the United States of America on 9/11 originated in Afghanistan, and if Afghanistan dissolved into a situation where the Taliban were able to take over, or a chaotic situation, it could easily return to an al Qaeda base for attacks," he said on "Fox News Sunday."

In the meantime, U.S. officials in Washington and on the ground appeared to be bracing themselves for a backlash.

The U.S. Embassy, on its Twitter feed, said the movement of U.S. personnel in southern Afghanistan would be restricted and warned that 'anti-American feelings and protests' may be ahead.

Michael O'Hanlon, a military expert at the Brookings Institution, said the quick, conciliatory statements from senior American officials were wise, but that nothing may be capable of staunching Afghan fury that may be unleashed by the killings.

"I don't know that a lot can be done," he said.

(Reporting by Missy Ryan, Alister Bull, Dave Clarke, Jim Vicini and Vicki Allen; Editing by Bill Trott and Stacey Joyce)

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U.S. servicemember allegedly opens fire on Afghans; 16 dead

By Jim Michaels, Oren Dorell and David Jackson

USA TODAY

By Allauddin Khan, AP

Afghan President Hamid Karzai called the act an "assassination" and demanded an explanation from the United States. U.S. officials, who have not confirmed details of the incident, issued immediate apologies.

The alleged shooting in Kandahar province follows a recent incident in which copies of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, were inadvertently burned at a U.S. base. The incident touched off days of rioting by Afghans outraged at the desecration.

Gen. John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, issued a statement pledging a "rapid and thorough investigation" into the shooting spree, and said the soldier will remain in U.S. custody.

Allen offered his regret and "deepest condolences" to the Afghan people for the Sunday shootings, and vowed that he will make sure that "anyone who is found to have committed wrongdoing is held fully accountable."

President Obama said he is "deeply saddened" by "tragic and shocking" about the incident. "I offer my condolences to the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives, and to the people of Afghanistan, who have endured too much violence and suffering," Obama said in a written statement today. "This incident is tragic and shocking, and does not represent the exceptional character of our military and the respect that the United States has for the people of Afghanistan."

Obama later called Karzai to "express his shock and sadness" at the shooting, the White House announced.

The latest incident will further strain relations between the two countries as the United States shifts its focus from combat operations to training and assisting Afghan security forces. The strategy depends on strong ties between Afghan and U.S. forces.

Some analysts said the two countries should be able to weather the crisis. "You don't change a strategy because of this sort of thing," said Michael O'Hanlon, director of research at the Brookings Institution.

Still, he acknowledged the strategy will be severely tested, as Afghans react sharply to the allegations. "You have a harder time sticking to it," he said of the strategy.

Anthony Cordesman, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the coalition command has not focused enough on the tensions caused by the foreign military presence in Afghanistan.

The Taliban has taken advantage of the incidents to turn public opinion against the coalition.

Five people were wounded in the attack, including a 15-year-old boy named Rafiullah who was shot in the leg and spoke to Karzai over the telephone, the Associated Press said. He described how the American soldier entered his house in the middle of the night, woke up his family and began shooting them, according to Karzai's statement.

The shooting started about 3 a.m., said Asadullah Khalid, the government representative for southern Afghanistan and a member of the delegation that went to investigate the incident.

A resident of the village of Alkozai, Abdul Baqi, told the AP that, based on accounts of his neighbors, the American gunman went into three different houses and opened fire.

"When it was happening in the middle of the night, we were inside our houses. I heard gunshots and then silence and then gunshots again," Baqi told AP.

Karzai said 16 civilians were killed in the shooting. The coalition command has not released details but said a servicemember remains in custody.

Contributing: The Associated Press

U.S. official: Afghanistan suspect in killings trained as sniper

U.S. official: Afghanistan suspect in killings trained as sniper

Mar. 12, 2012 08:13 PM

Associated Press

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- The soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians, most of them children, and burning their bodies was trained as a sniper and recently suffered a head injury in Iraq, U.S. officials said Monday.

The name of the suspect, a married, 38-year-old father of two, has not been released. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said he may face capital charges, and that the U.S. must resist pressure from Washington and Kabul to change course in Afghanistan because of anti-American outrage over the shooting.

"We seem to get tested almost every other day with challenges that test our leadership and our commitment to the mission that we're involved in," Panetta told reporters traveling with him to Kyrgyzstan. "War is hell."

A U.S. official said that during a recent tour of duty in Iraq, the suspect was involved in a vehicle accident and suffered a head injury. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter is under investigation.

The vehicle accident was not a combat-related event, the official said. There was no available indication about the extent of the injury, or whether his injury could be linked to any abnormal behavior afterward.

Two U.S. officials speaking on condition of anonymity said the suspect had been trained as a sniper.

Sunday's attack in southern Kandahar province unfolded in two villages near a U.S. base. Villager Mohammad Zahir recounted how an American soldier burst into his home in the middle of the night, searched the rooms, then dropped to a knee and shot his father in the thigh as he emerged from a bedroom.

"He was not holding anything -- not even a cup of tea," Zahir said.

The shootings come as anti-Americanism already is boiling over in Afghanistan after U.S. troops burned Qurans last month and a video of Marines urinating on alleged Taliban corpses was posted on the Internet in January.

If the attack unleashes another wave of anti-foreigner hatred, it could threaten the future of the U.S.-led coalition's mission in Afghanistan. The events have also raised doubts among U.S. political figures that the long and costly war is worthy.

An enraged Afghan President Hamid Karzai called it "an assassination, an intentional killing of innocent civilians" that cannot be forgiven. He demanded an explanation from Washington for the deaths, which included nine children and three women.

NATO and member countries said the slayings were a blow to the alliance's efforts to cultivate trust but would not affect the timeline to hand over security operations to Afghans by the end of 2014. The White House said U.S. objectives will not change because of the killings.

Outraged Afghan lawmakers called for a suspension of talks on how to formalize a long-term U.S. military presence in the country and demanded that the shooter face trial in an Afghan court.

The soldier, a staff sergeant who has been in the military for 11 years and served three tours in Iraq, was being held in pretrial confinement in Kandahar by the U.S. military while Army officials review his complete deployment and medical history, Pentagon officials said.

The soldier's name was not released because it would be "inappropriate" to do so before charges are filed, said Pentagon spokesman George Little.

But Panetta, his first public remarks on the incident, said Monday evening the death penalty is a consideration as the military moves to investigate and possibly put the suspect on trial.

The soldier was deployed to Afghanistan on Dec. 3 with the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord located south of Seattle, according to a congressional source, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

He was attached Feb. 1 to the village stability program in Belambai, a half-mile from one of the villages where the attack took place, the source said.

Zahir told how he watched the soldier enter his house and move through it methodically, checking each room.

"I heard a gunshot. When I came out of my room, somebody entered our house. He was in a NATO forces uniform. I didn't see his face because it was dark," he said.

Zahir, 26, said he quickly went to a part of the house where animals are penned.

"After that, I saw him moving to different areas of the house -- like he was searching," he said.

His father, unarmed, then took a few steps out of his bedroom, Zahir recalled. Then the soldier fired.

"I love my father, but I was sure that if I came out he would shoot me too. So I waited." Zahir said. His mother started pulling his father into the room, and he helped cover his father's bullet wound with a cloth. Zahir's father survived.

After the gunman left, Zahir said he heard more gunshots near the house, and he stayed in hiding for a few minutes to make sure he was gone.

Tensions between Afghanistan and the United States soared last month after word of the Quran burnings got out. President Barack Obama said the burnings were a mistake and apologized.

The strains had appeared to be easing as recently as Friday, when the two governments signed a memorandum of understanding about the transfer of Afghan detainees to Afghan control -- a key step toward an eventual strategic partnership to govern U.S. forces in the country after most combat troops leave in 2014.

In Afghanistan's parliament, however, lawmakers called Monday for a halt to talks on the strategic partnership document until it is clear that soldier behind the shooting rampage is facing justice in Afghanistan.

"We said to Karzai: If you sign that document, you are betraying your country," said Shikiba Ashimi, a parliamentarian from Kandahar. "There is no more tolerance for this kind of incident. It is over, over. We want such people on trial inside Afghanistan, in Afghan courts."

"The U.S. should be very careful. It is sabotaging the atmosphere of this strategic partnership," she added.

Currently, American service members in Afghanistan are subject to U.S. military law and proceedings. But the parliamentarians said they want this changed in the document under negotiation. The U.S. is unlikely to agree to that issue, pulling out of Iraq when Baghdad demanded the right to prosecute U.S. forces.

The photographs of dead toddlers wrapped in bloody blankets in Panjwai district started to make the rounds in Afghanistan on Monday. The images were broadcast on Afghan TV stations, and people posted them on social network sites and blogs.

The public response to the shootings so far has been calmer than the six days of riots and attacks after Qurans were burned at Bagram Air Field, leaving 30 people dead including six U.S. soldiers.

The more muted response could be a result of Afghans being used to dealing with civilian casualties over a decade of war. Some said the slayings in Panjwai was more in keeping with Afghans' experience of deadly night raids and airstrikes than the Quran burnings were.

"It's not that these things have an immediate effect, it's that they exacerbate tensions, and I think we're seeing the U.S. and the Afghan governments being really impatient with each other. There's an element of mistrust, and these incidents really exacerbate that," said Kate Clark, of the Kabul-based Afghan Analysts Network.

There's also a question of how the slayings will affect ongoing attempts to negotiate with the Taliban, who may feel that they have a stronger position to appeal to the people. The insurgent group vowed revenge for the attack.

The al-Qaida-linked militant group said in a statement on their website that "sick-minded American savages" committed the "blood-soaked and inhumane crime" in a rural region that is the cradle of the Taliban and where coalition forces have fought for control for years.

U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan have stepped up security following the shootings out of concern about retaliatory attacks. The U.S. Embassy has also warned American citizens in Afghanistan about the possibility of reprisals. As standard practice, the coalition increased security following the shootings out of concern about retaliatory attacks, said German Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, a coalition spokesman.

The suspect in the shootings began his first deployment to Afghanistan in December, according to a senior U.S. official. However, he had only been assigned to the base in Panjwai about six weeks ago, the congressional source said.

He is from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, and was assigned to support a special operations unit of either Green Berets or Navy SEALs engaged in a village stability operation, said a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation is still ongoing. Special operations troops pair with local residents chosen by village elders to become essentially a sanctioned, armed neighborhood watch.

The Army Criminal Investigation Division has started an investigation into the incident, said Chris Grey, a spokesman for the division. He declined to give other details to protect the integrity of the investigation.

The Afghan Defense Ministry said the gunman left the base in Panjwai district and walked about one mile (1,800 meters) to Balandi village. Villagers described how they cowered in fear around 3 a.m. as gunshots rang out and the soldier roamed from house to house, firing on those inside. They said he entered three homes in all and set fire to some of the bodies after he killed them.

Eleven of the 12 civilians killed in Balandi were from the same family. The remaining victim was a neighbor.

From Balandi, the gunman walked roughly one mile to the village of Alkozai, which was only about 500 meters from the American military base. There the gunman killed four people in one house and then moved to Zahir's house, where he shot his father in the leg.

The exact circumstances of his arrest were unclear. Some U.S. officials said the soldier returned to base after the shootings and was taken into custody, while later reports suggested he did not turn himself in.

Some Afghan officials and villagers expressed doubt that a single U.S. soldier could have carried out all the killings and burned the bodies afterward. Some villagers also told officials there were multiple soldiers and heard shooting from different directions. But many others said they only saw a single soldier.

Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings, another spokesman for the coalition, insisted there was only one gunman.

"There's no indication that there was more than one shooter," he said.

Agha Lalia, member of the Kandahar provincial council who is from Panjwai district, said he spoke to two people who were injured in the shooting at a hospital at Kandahar Air Field, where they are being treated by coalition medical personnel. Both said they only saw one soldier shooting.

Associated Press writers Rahim Faiez, Amir Shah, Sebastian Abbot and Deb Riechmann in Kabul and Pauline Jelinek and Bob Burns in Washington contributed to this report. Gene Johnson contributed from Seattle.

Afghanistan killing clues being sought

Afghanistan killing clues being sought

by Craig Whitlock - Mar. 12, 2012 11:08 PM

Washington Post

Military investigators were combing through a U.S. Army sergeant's personnel and medical records on Monday to determine what might have caused him to slip away from his base in southern Afghanistan and massacre 16 sleeping villagers, most of them women and children, in the black of night.

U.S. commanders said they think the sergeant acted alone in Sunday's rampage in the rural Panjwai district of Kandahar province. But they were struggling to deduce a motive for the attack, which has prompted outrage among Afghan officials and inflamed an already strained relationship between Washington and Kabul.

The suspect, a trained sniper, was diagnosed with traumatic brain injury after suffering a head injury in Iraq during a vehicle rollover in 2010, two U.S. military officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details of the case. The soldier was subsequently declared fit for duty, the officials said.

Other U.S. military officials said they were working quickly to build a case against the suspect but declined to identify him by name until charges could be filed. They described him as a married, 38-year-old staff sergeant with two children who joined the Army 11 years ago. They said he had served three tours of duty in Iraq and deployed to Afghanistan for the first time in December.

"The evidence at this point, both in terms of observations and reports and interviews, leads us to believe that he acted as an individual," Gen. John R. Allen, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, told CNN. "We're going to do a thorough investigation. We're going to hold this individual accountable."

U.S. officials said the soldier abruptly walked off a combat outpost about 3 a.m. Sunday local time.

Allen said that an Afghan soldier standing watch reported the unauthorized departure but that others on the base could not mobilize quickly enough to track down the missing American before the attack, the deadliest on civilians by a U.S. service member during the decadelong Afghan war.

"There was a head count done amongst the American soldiers; (they) recognized that he was missing, unaccounted for," Allen said.

"We put together a search party right away, and it was as that search party was forming that we began to have indications of the outcome of his departure."

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the soldier returned to the base on his own, admitted what he had done and surrendered.

"He went out in the early morning and went to these homes and fired on these families," Panetta told reporters. "And, at some point after that, came back to the (forward operating base) and basically turned himself in and told individuals what had happened."

Asked if the soldier had confessed to the killings, Panetta said he suspected "that was the case."

U.S. military officials said the soldier was part of an Afghan police-training program in villages in Kandahar province and had been assigned to support U.S. Special Forces in the area.

The officials said that it is highly likely that the suspect will be brought back to the United States to face charges and a possible court-martial but that a final decision is pending. The probe is being led by the Army's Criminal Investigation Command.

The soldier's unit, the 3rd Stryker Combat Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, deployed to southern Afghanistan in December from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, an Army and Air Force installation near Tacoma, Wash.

The cornerstone base of the Pacific Northwest recently became a focus of public scrutiny after allegations that its military doctors had altered diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder for hundreds of soldiers.

A military investigation of the base's medical center is scrutinizing assertions by staff members and soldiers that, starting in 2007, diagnoses for at least 300 service members were downgraded to lesser conditions. Some patients have alleged that the diagnoses were changed so that the military would not be responsible for their treatment and long-term care.

The commander of Lewis-McChord's Madigan Army Medical Center has been placed on leave during the investigation, and a leading forensic psychiatrist has resigned.

Some military-support groups near Lewis-McChord have criticized base officials for not allowing troops sufficient time to heal from a variety of injuries between deployments.

Jorge Gonzales, an anti-war activist and the director of a program that advocates for better treatment for traumatized military personnel, said the base's medical center is understaffed and overwhelmed by troops suffering from traumatic and stress disorders.

"They're just not ready for all these soldiers coming back with problems," said Gonzales, a former soldier once posted at Lewis-McChord. "They want to get soldiers shipped out as fast as they can. ... They have a quick-fix program -- just get you medicated and send you back out."

Last year, the base had a major spike in soldier suicides, with 12 confirmed cases.

Sheri Van Veldhouse, a military spouse who organizes a traumatic-brain-injury support group near the base, said redeploying a soldier with such a condition is especially risky. She helped launch the support group after her husband, a retired soldier, suffered a head injury when he was hit by a car.

"There's no way in the world I'd want him out on a battlefield after a brain injury," she said. "You're handing them a gun. ... The anger issues are there. They have flash responses to that anger. It's not a good combination."

Lewis-McChord has also attracted notoriety in the past for other battlefield crimes committed by its soldiers.

Four members of a platoon from the 5th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, were convicted for their roles in the murders of three unarmed Afghan civilians in 2010.

Military prosecutors said that members of the platoon formed a "kill team" to hunt down random Afghans for sport and that the ringleader hoarded their victims' body parts as war trophies.

In January, a 24-year-old veteran of the Iraq War who had served at Lewis-McChord shot and killed a ranger at Mount Rainier National Park. The former soldier, whose body was later found in the wilderness, died of exposure.

Accused American soldier flown out of Afghanistan

Accused American soldier flown out of Afghanistan

Mar. 14, 2012 02:03 PM

Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The American soldier accused of shooting 16 Afghan villagers in a pre-dawn killing spree was flown out of Afghanistan on Wednesday to an undisclosed location, even as many Afghans called for him to face justice in their country.

Afghan government officials did not immediately respond to calls for comment on the late-night announcement. The U.S. military said the transfer did not preclude the possibility of trying the case in Afghanistan, and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said the soldier could receive capital punishment if convicted.

Many fear a misstep by the U.S. military in handling the case could ignite a firestorm in Afghanistan that would shatter already tense relations between the two countries. The alliance appeared near the breaking point last month when the burning of Qurans in a garbage pit at a U.S. base sparked protests and retaliatory attacks that killed more than 30 people, including six U.S. soldiers.

In recent days the two nations made headway toward an agreement governing a long-term American presence here, but the massacre in Kandahar province on Sunday has called all such negotiations into question.

Afghan lawmakers have demanded that the soldier be publicly tried in Afghanistan to show that he was being brought to justice, calling on President Hamid Karzai to suspend all talks with the U.S. until that happens.

The U.S. staff sergeant, who has not been named or charged, allegedly slipped out of his small base in southern Afghanistan before dawn, crept into three houses and shot men, women and children at close range then burned some of the bodies. By sunrise, there were 16 corpses.

The soldier was held by the U.S. military in Kandahar until Wednesday evening, when he was flown out of Afghanistan "based on a legal recommendation," said Navy Capt. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman.

"We do not have appropriate detention facilities in Afghanistan," Kirby said, explaining that he was referring to a facility for a U.S. service member "in this kind of case."

The soldier was transported aboard a U.S. military aircraft to a "pretrial confinement facility" in another country, a U.S. military official said, without saying where. The official, who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to release the information publicly, would not confirm if that meant an American military base or another type of facility. He said the Afghan government was informed of the move.

Kirby said the transfer did not necessarily mean the trial would be held outside Afghanistan, but the other military official said legal proceedings would continue outside Afghanistan.

U.S. officials had previously said it would be technically possible to hold proceedings in Afghanistan, noting other court-martial trials held here.

The decision to remove the soldier from the country may complicate the prosecution, said Michael Waddington, an American military defense lawyer who represented the ringleader of the 2010 thrill killings of three Afghan civilians by soldiers from the same Washington state base as the accused staff sergeant.

The prosecutors won't be able to use statements from Afghan witnesses unless the defense is able to cross-examine them, he said.

Waddington said the decision to remove the suspect was likely a security call.

"His presence in the country would put himself and other service members in jeopardy," Waddington said.

But the patience of Afghan investigators has already appeared to be wearing thin regarding the shootings in Panjwai district.

The soldier was caught on U.S. surveillance video that showed him walking up to his base, laying down his weapon and raising his arms in surrender, according to an Afghan official who viewed the footage.

The official said Wednesday there were also two to three hours of video footage covering the time of the attack that Afghan investigators are trying to get from the U.S. military. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

U.S. authorities showed their Afghan counterparts the video of the surrender to prove that only one perpetrator was involved in the shootings, the official said.

Some Afghan officials and residents in the villages that were attacked have insisted there was more than one shooter. If the disagreement persists, it could deepen the distrust between the two countries.

Panetta, in a series of meetings with troops and Afghan leaders Wednesday, said the U.S. must never lose sight of its mission in the war, despite recent violence including what appeared to be an attempted attack near the runway of a military base where he was about to land.

It wasn't clear whether it was an attempt to attack the defense chief, whose travel to southern Afghanistan was not made public before he arrived. Panetta was informed of the incident after landing.

"We will not allow individual incidents to undermine our resolve to that mission," he told about 200 Marines at Camp Leatherneck. "We will be tested we will be challenged, we'll be challenged by our enemy, we'll be challenged by ourselves, we'll be challenged by the hell of war itself. But none of that, none of that, must ever deter us from the mission that we must achieve."

According the Pentagon spokesman, an Afghan stole a vehicle at a British airfield in southern Afghanistan and drove it onto a runway, crashing into a ditch about the same time that Leon Panetta's aircraft was landing.

The pickup truck drove at high speed onto the ramp where Panetta's plane was intended to stop, Kirby said. No one in Panetta's party was injured.

--

Jelinek reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Deb Riechmann and Sebastian Abbot contributed from Kabul, Lolita C. Baldor from Camp Leatherneck, Mirwais Khan from Kandahar, and Gene Johnson contributed from Seattle.

Afghan massacre suspect upset at fourth tour: lawyer

Afghan massacre suspect upset at fourth tour: lawyer

8:36 a.m. CDT, March 16, 2012

SEATTLE— The U.S. soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians was upset at having to do a fourth tour of duty in a war zone and was likely suffering from stress after seeing colleagues wounded, his defense lawyer said on Thursday.

Seattle defense attorney John Henry Browne said the 38-year-old staff sergeant from the Midwest accused of gunning down children and families on Sunday had already been wounded twice in three tours in Iraq and had been told he would not be sent back to a war zone.

"He and his family were told that his tours in the Middle East were over. His family was counting on him not being redeployed," said Browne at a news conference in Seattle. "Literally overnight that changed. So I think it would be fair to say that he and the family were not happy that he was going back."

An unnamed U.S. official told The New York Times the killings were a result of "a combination of stress, alcohol and domestic issues - he just snapped."

Asked about the Times report, Browne said he did not know about alcohol and acknowledged that stress was a factor, but he dismissed the domestic issue as "nonsense."

Browne said he had not discussed details of the incident with his client but added that the man's unit had sustained casualties about the time of the civilian killings. He saw his friend's leg blown off the day before the rampage, Browne told the Associated Press. The details have not been independently verified.

"His leg was blown off, and my client was standing next to him," Browne said.

Browne said the incident affected all of the soldiers at the base. It isn't clear whether the incident might have helped prompt the horrific middle-of-the-night attack on civilians in two villages last Sunday.

Browne also would not go into specifics about the identity or well-being of his client. He said only that he was originally from the Midwest and was at the moment "more shocked than anything."

The soldier, a 38-year-old father of two who is originally from the Midwest, deployed last December with the 3rd Stryker Brigade, and on Feb. 1 was attached to a "village stability operation." Browne described him as highly decorated and said he had once been nominated for a Bronze Star, which he did not receive.

The death penalty had been discussed with Army lawyers, said Browne, and was still on the table as a possible sentence.

Lieutenant Colonel Gary Dangerfield, a spokesman at the Lewis-McChord base, declined to comment on the case.

Details have dribbled out about the sergeant in the 2-3 Infantry, 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, which is housed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, near Seattle.

HEAD WOUND

The soldier served three tours in Iraq, where he received a head wound and lost part of one foot. He was not sure if he was ready for Afghanistan, the lawyer said. "He wasn't certain he was healthy enough. Physically, mostly," Browne said.

Browne, who represented U.S. serial killer Ted Bundy, described his client as an "exemplary" soldier and said the charges against him - and the man's name - may not be known for weeks.

He had joined the Army after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.

"He enlisted within a week of 9/11. He felt it was his duty to stand up for the United States," Browne said. The soldier met his wife online and they have a "very healthy marriage" and two children. The wife and the children, ages 3 and 4, have been moved to the Seattle-area military base for protection.

The unnamed U.S. staff sergeant is accused of killing the civilians in what witnesses described as a nighttime massacre near a U.S. base in Afghanistan's violent Kandahar province.

He arrived in Afghanistan in December and had been at the Belambai base since February 1.

Browne said that charges against his client would be filed "probably not sooner than a few weeks" and that his name would not be released before the charges.

The soldier is being held at a U.S. base in Kuwait, and it is not clear where or when a trial would be held, Browne said, but it would be under military rules.

The Times reported the military was preparing to move the soldier to a prison in the United States as early as Friday, most likely to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

There has been broad speculation that the sergeant could have been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Browne did not rule that out.

Browne, known for a flamboyant courtroom manner and inventive legal mind, attempted to defend a local thief known as the "Barefoot Bandit" on the grounds that he was suffering from PTSD from an unsettled childhood.

"Barefoot Bandit" Colton Harris-Moore, 20, was sentenced to 6-1/2 years in prison in January for a two-year crime spree.

THE SUSPECT'S FAMILY

The soldier's wife and other family members could provide no explanation for his alleged middle-of-the-night foray outside the small base where he was stationed and the deadly rampage that followed, the attorney said.

"They were totally shocked. He's never said anything antagonistic about Muslims, he's never said anything about Middle Eastern individuals. He has in general been very mild-mannered, so they were shocked by this."

Out of fear of possible reprisals, the suspect's wife and children have been brought onto Joint Base Lewis-McChord, south of Tacoma, Wash., Browne said.

Browne said the family strongly rejected recent news reports that the suspect was having domestic problems.

"It's quite offensive to the family, and to us, that there's some sort of suggestion that there was some problem. It was a very strong marriage. There was a lot of love, a lot of respect," he said. "There are problems, like there are with all of us as far as finances and all, but nothing serious. There's certainly no marital discord in this family at all."

Afghanistan killings suspect identified by official

Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales is the accused killer

Afghanistan killings suspect identified by official

by Gene Johnson - Mar. 16, 2012 05:32 PM

Associated Press

SEATTLE -- The attorney for a soldier accused of killing 16 civilians in Afghanistan says the suspect is from Lake Tapps, Wash.

John Henry Browne, a defense attorney from Seattle, confirmed the identity of 38-year-old Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales on Friday.

The military had earlier declined to name the suspect. A senior U.S. official said Friday it was Bales, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation into an incident that has roiled relations with Afghanistan.

AP National Security Writer Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report.

Details emerge about U.S. suspect in Afghan massacre

Details emerge about U.S. suspect in Afghan massacre

by Adam Geller - Mar. 16, 2012 05:41 PM

Associated Press

He is the suspect without a name, his identity as shadowed now as the night the Army says he slipped into a pair of slumbering Afghan villages and slaughtered 16 civilians whose safety was his assigned mission.

Five days after the massacre, a portrait of the 38-year-old staff sergeant is beginning to emerge, though it remains very sketchy.

He is married with two small children. He lost part of one foot because of injuries suffered in Iraq during one of his three tours of duty there.

His lawyer says that when the 11-year veteran heard he was being sent to Afghanistan late last year, he did not want to go. He also said that a day before the rampage, the soldier saw a comrade's leg blown off.

Much of what is known about the suspect was disclosed by his lawyer, John Henry Browne, a veteran defense attorney from Seattle who came forward Thursday.

Military officials have insisted from the beginning that it is usual procedure to keep a suspect's identity secret until he is officially charged. They have maintained that stance even after a hearing for the detained soldier Tuesday found probable cause to continue holding him.

Browne says the sergeant is originally from the Midwest but now lives near Joint Base Lewis-McChord, near Tacoma, Wash. His children are 3 and 4.

The sergeant's family says they saw no signs of aggression or anger. "They were totally shocked," by accounts of the massacre, Browne said. "He's never said anything antagonistic about Muslims. He's in general very mild-mannered."

The lawyer denied reports that the soldier had marital problems, saying he and his wife have a solid relationship.

Browne, who said he has met with the family and talked with the suspect, declined to release the soldier's name.

"Everybody is worried about the safety of his family, and I am honoring that," he said.

The suspect's family had been moved onto the base to protect them, military officials say.

The soldier, who received sniper training, is assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, of the 2nd Infantry Division, which is based at Lewis-McChord and has been dispatched to Iraq three times since 2003, military officials say.

During the suspect's time in Iraq, Browne said, the soldier was injured twice. He suffered a concussion in a vehicle accident caused by an improvised explosive device, and sustained a battle-related injury requiring surgery that removed part of one foot. Browne said his client was "highly decorated."

When he returned to the Seattle area, the staff sergeant at first thought he would not be required to join his unit when it shipped out for Afghanistan, the lawyer said. His family was counting on him staying home.

"He wasn't thrilled about going on another deployment," Browne said. "He was told he wasn't going back, and then he was told he was going."

The staff sergeant arrived in Afghanistan in December. On Feb. 1 he was assigned to a base in the Panjwai District, near Kandahar, to work with a village stability force that pairs special operations troops with villagers to help provide neighborhood security.

On Saturday, the day before the shooting spree, Browne said the soldier saw his friend's leg blown off. Browne said his client's family provided him with that information, which has not been independently verified.

The other soldier's "leg was blown off, and my client was standing next to him," he said.

Shortly before 3 a.m. Sunday, military officials say, the suspect walked off the base.

Wearing a NATO forces uniform, officials say he moved through the nearby villages of Alkozai and Balandi, barging into homes and opening fire on those inside, then burning some of the bodies. Nine of those killed were children. Eleven of the dead were from a single family.

A surveillance video captured by a blimp that surveys the area around the base shows that the soldier later approached the south gate of the base with an Afghan shawl covering the weapon in his hands, according to an Afghan official who was shown the footage by his U.S. counterparts.

In the video, the man walks up to the base, lays down the weapon and raises his arms in surrender.

Officials say he has not cooperated and instead asked for an attorney.

Associated Press writer Gene Johnson contributed from Seattle. He can be reached at twitter.com/GeneAPseattle.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai blasts U.S. over probe into shootings

Afghan leader blasts U.S. over probe into shootings

Mar. 16, 2012 07:20 AM

Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai lashed out at the United States on Friday, saying he is at the "end of the rope" because of the lack of U.S. cooperation into a probe of a killing spree allegedly carried out by an American soldier.

In a meeting with families of the 16 Afghan civilians killed Sunday in southern Afghanistan, Karzai said the delegation he sent to investigate the shootings did not receive the cooperation the Afghans expected from American officials.

During the meeting, the relatives of the dead insisted there must have been more than one shooter and argued that they did not receive all the information they asked for from Americans.

Previously, Afghan officials had said that there was surveillance video that was kept from them.

"This has been going on for too long. This is by all means the end of the rope here," Karzai told reporters at the end of the meeting.

"This form of activity, this behavior, cannot be tolerated. It's past, past, past the time," Karzai added.

The Afghan leader stressed that he wants a good relationship with the U.S. but that it is becoming increasingly difficult. He insisted that the U.S. needs to respect Afghan culture and laws.

The U.S. staff sergeant suspected in the killings is accused of slipping out of his base before dawn on Sunday and sneaking into the homes of three Afghan families, shooting 16 of them dead and burning some of the bodies. Another five people were wounded.

The soldier has not been identified, but officials have said the 38-year-old is based in Washington state. He was transferred late Wednesday to a facility in Kuwait and is expected to be flown to a military prison in the U.S. as early as Friday.

On Thursday, the American campaign in Afghanistan suffered two punishing blows as the Taliban announced they were breaking off talks with the U.S. and Karzai tried to speed up the transfer of security responsibilities to Afghan forces and said the international forces should pull out of rural areas.

Afghan officials said Karzai wanted the pullback to start now, but U.S. officials said he did not tell Panetta that it should happen immediately.

Karzai said President Barack Obama called him earlier Friday seeking to confirm the Afghan leader had requested the pullout of international troops from bases in rural areas such as the one where the accused U.S. soldier was stationed.

"Yesterday, I said clearly that the Americans should leave our villages," Karzai said. "This morning, Obama called regarding this issue. He asked, 'Did you announce this?' I said, "Yes, I announced it.'"

"I insist on this issue," Karzai said, adding: "The fight is not in the villages, not in the houses of Afghanistan."

The Taliban said they were calling off the talks because U.S. had failed to follow through on its promises and made new demands. The militant group also said the U.S. falsely claimed that it had entered into multilateral negotiations that included the Afghan government.

Karzai also said Friday that the Taliban should be talking directly with his government.

The moves represent new setbacks to America's strategy for ending the 10-year-old war at a time when support for the conflict is plummeting. Part of the U.S. exit strategy is to transfer authority gradually to Afghan forces. Another tack is to pull the Taliban into political discussions with the Afghan government, though it's unclear that there has been any progress since January.

Army names suspect in killings of 16 Afghans

Army names suspect in killings of 16 Afghans

By William M. Welch, USA TODAY

The soldier accused of slaughtering 16 Afghan villagers as they slept, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, is in custody at a U.S. military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, after arriving late Friday night, the Army said.

Bales, 38, who grew up in the Cincinnati area and was in his fourth combat deployment, was identified by name by the Army as he was returned to the United States five days after he is accused of going on a shooting rampage near his base in the Kandahar province of southern Afghanistan.

Bales arrived in the United States on a military flight from Kuwait, where Army officials moved him following the shootings.

The Army issued a statement from the Pentagon announcing Bales' arrival in the United States and said he was being held in pre-trial solitary confinement at the Midwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility at Fort Leavenworth. The Army describes the prison as a state-of-the-art medium-custody facility.

The Army said Bales was being held in "special housing" in his own cell rather than the standard four-person room. The prison houses pre-trial and convicted soldiers sentenced up to five years confinement and has a 464-person capacity.

Bales has not yet been charged.

He's accused of leaving his outpost in southern Afghanistan base in the early morning hours Sunday and killing nine children and seven other civilians, then burning some bodies. He was taken into custody after walking back to the combat outpost.

A summary of Bales' military record released by the Pentagon said he attained the rank of staff sergeant in 2008 and has been in the Army since Nov. 8, 2001.

He is a member of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash.

Bales is a sniper who had completed the military's sniper training course as well as other training programs. He was on his first tour of duty in Afghanistan and arrived in the country last December. He had served three war-zone tours in Iraq of 12, 15 and 10 months' duration.

According to public records, Bales was charged with criminal assault in in Tacoma, Wash., in August 2002. The Associated Press reported he was arrested for assault on a girlfriend, not the woman he later married.

Bales pleaded not guilty, and the case was dismissed after he underwent 20 hours of anger management counseling. A separate hit-and-run charge was dismissed in a nearby town's municipal court three years ago, according to records.

Bales and his wife, Karilyn, who works for a bank, live in Lake Tapps, Wash. They have two children, ages 3 and 4.

Neighbors described Bales as good-natured and warm, and said they had seen him playing with his children outside their split-level home about 35 miles south of Seattle.

"I just can't believe Bob's the guy who did this," said Paul Wohlberg, a next-door neighbor who said his family was friends with the Bales. "A good guy got put in the wrong place at the wrong time … I never thought something like this would happen to him."

Kassie Holland, who lives next door, said she would often see Bales playing with his two kids and the family together at the modern split-level home.

"I'm shocked," she said. "I can't believe it was him. There were no signs. It's really sad. I don't want to believe that he did it.

"He always had a good attitude about being in the service,'' she added. "He was never really angry about it. When I heard him talk, he said, it seemed like, yeah, that's my job. That's what I do. He never expressed a lot of emotion toward it."

Bales will be represented by military lawyers and Seattle criminal defense attorney John Henry Browne, who once defended serial killer Ted Bundy, who was executed in Florida in 1989.

Browne said Bales was injured twice while deployed to Iraq, suffering a concussion in a vehicle accident caused by an improvised explosive device, and a battle-related injury requiring surgery that removed part of one foot. The service record released by the Army did not mention battle injuries or a Purple Heart award for combat injury.

Browne said when the 11-year veteran heard he was being sent to Afghanistan late last year, he did not want to go.

"He wasn't thrilled about going on another deployment," Browne said. "He was told he wasn't going back, and then he was told he was going."

Contributing: Associated Press, Donna Leinwand Leger, Elizabeth Weise and Jim Michaels.

Karzai says he's at 'end of rope'

Karzai says he's at 'end of rope' over American killing of civilians

by Robert Burns - Mar. 16, 2012 11:34 PM

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Afghan President Hamid Karzai says he's at "the end of the rope," and a majority of Americans feel the same way.

Of all the past decade's setbacks in the endeavor to form a solid alliance with Afghanistan and defeat the Taliban, the war effort has been driven to a new low by the slaughter of nine Afghan children and seven adults, allegedly by a U.S. soldier whose identity had been kept secret until late Friday.

He is Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, 38, of Lake Tapps, Wash., his attorney confirmed.

Late Friday, the soldier arrived at the maximum-security prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., after being flown from a U.S. military detention facility in Kuwait, though Karzai demanded anew that he be tried under the Afghan justice system.

Karzai also is now insisting that U.S. forces retreat from rural areas immediately and let Afghans take the lead in security next year.

But the White House and the Pentagon said Friday that nothing will collapse the war plan, even after the massacre, inadvertent Quran burnings by U.S. soldiers and the deaths of seven American servicemen at the hands of their allies.

Polls have indicated that up to 60 percent of Americans believe it's time to end the war in Afghanistan. And that's not lost on the administration.

"The Afghan people are tired of war," Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, just back from Afghanistan, said on Friday. "The American people share some of that tiredness after 10 years of war, as well. All of that's understandable."

But he also said he is confident that Americans realize the U.S. needs to finish its work of stabilizing Afghanistan to ensure that al-Qaida cannot again use that country as a launching pad to attack the United States. His theme, patience, is likely to dominate the discourse in Washington and in allied capitals in the lead-up to a NATO summit meeting in Chicago in May.

President Barack Obama called Karzai on Friday seeking clarification on the demand concerning U.S. troops in rural areas, and White House press secretary Jay Carney said the leaders agreed to keep discussing the matter, which is at the heart of the military strategy.

"I think that the two men were very much on the same page" about gradually handing over security responsibility to Afghan forces, with U.S. and other international troops switching to a support role throughout Afghanistan sometime in 2013, Carney said. A final transition to Afghan control is supposed to happen by the end of 2014.

Another pillar of the war strategy is creating meaningful peace talks with the Taliban insurgents, but that, too, suffered cracks in the aftermath of the village massacre. The Taliban said they were no longer talking on terms set by the Americans.

A senior U.S. official familiar with the discussions said American officials presume that the timing of the Taliban announcement following Sunday's killings was an attempt to gain greater leverage. Officials have long calculated that the Taliban would not engage seriously in peace talks unless they had lost more ground militarily.

Despite calls for the Army suspect to be tried in Afghanistan, Bales was flown Wednesday to a military detention facility in Kuwait, where that country's officials expressed unhappiness that they were not first consulted.

Karzai has often been critical of the American effort, and on Friday, he toughened his talk even more in addressing a group of villagers visiting Kabul from the Panjwai District in Kandahar province, where the slaughter of the 16 civilians took place.

"The fight is not in the villages, not in the houses of Afghanistan," he said, repeating a familiar theme. "It is not safe for you (U.S. troops) in the villages, and it is creating a bad name for you." He added: "Continuously, I have told the Americans to leave our villages. You are not needed in our villages. There is no terrorism ... so what are you doing in the villages?"

Karzai has often said the insurgent problem in his country springs from support across the border in Pakistan, not from unrest in villages. Critics of the U.S. and NATO military plan also have said that a large military presence, especially in conservative rural districts, encourages violence and bolsters the Taliban argument that they are fighting a foreign occupier.

But a central tenet of the war strategy is that the presence of U.S. and international troops in certain towns and villages is necessary to separate the population from the insurgents, creating space for local, provincial and national government to take firmer root.

The apparently unprovoked killing spree Sunday in two villages in southern Afghanistan, allegedly by the 38-year-old Army staff sergeant trained as a sniper, is only the latest in a string of missteps by American forces.

Their mistaken burning of Muslim holy books at an air base in Bagram last month triggered a wave of violent protests across the country and an apology by Obama.

"As tragic as incidents like these are -- and there have been a string of tragic incidents in recent weeks -- it would be just as tragic, if not more, if we let it affect the overall mission, which is having success," said Navy Capt. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman. "And it's just as wrong to extrapolate from those incidents some sort of overarching belief or notion that it (the U.S.-Afghan partnership) is failing."

The events stole attention from what Kirby and other U.S. officials believe is important battlefield progress, at least in the south and southwestern sectors of Afghanistan.

Panetta visited the country this week.

The Military Path to Justice Could Be Lengthy

The Military Path to Justice Could Be Lengthy

By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Published: March 19, 2012

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales has yet to be formally accused of the act that the Army suspects him of committing: the nighttime massacre of 16 civilians in a village a mile from his post.

But once preliminary charges are announced, as early as this week, the military justice system will proceed deliberately, regardless of the enormity of the charges and the international repercussions of the acts involved.

It is a system devised to be flexible enough to be convened on a battlefield, and broad enough to deal with anything from theft and insubordination to atrocity. Experts agree there will be no quick resolution in this case, especially if the charges carry the death penalty, which Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said last week “could be a consideration” in the case.

That, said John Galligan, a military lawyer in private practice in Texas, would mean “it’s going to take several years.”

Many of the early details provided by military sources about the rampage have not been confirmed, and the case could founder in the courtroom on questions of evidence collected under difficult conditions thousands of miles away, potentially with few of the safeguards that courts in both the military and civilian worlds rely on when it comes to building a trustworthy account.

To Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School, there is still too much to learn for easy conclusions to be drawn. “The narrative has not yet emerged,” he said.

One thing, however, is now certain: Sergeant Bales’s court-martial will be held in the United States. The military on Monday released the transcript of a briefing Sunday with Afghan journalists in which an American official said the case will be heard “somewhere in the United States.” The location, the official said, has not been determined, and witnesses may be flown over from Afghanistan. American service members are not subject to the Afghan criminal justice system, under a longstanding “status of forces agreement” between the United States and the Afghan government.

Sergeant Bales, who is being held at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., met with his defense team for the first time on Monday, in a session lasting several hours. His lawyer, John Henry Browne, told The Associated Press that his client’s recall of that night was patchy.

“He has some memory of some things that happened that night,” Mr. Browne said. “He has some memories of before the incident and he has some memories of after the incident. In between, very little.”

Mr. Browne told CBS News his client said that he had not been drunk, and that he had only had “a couple of sips of something.”

Unless a plea deal is struck, the outcome is anything but certain. The Army prosecuted 44 soldiers for murder or manslaughter of civilians in Iraq or Afghanistan from 2001 to 2011; 30 were convicted of some form of homicide, 6 were convicted of other offenses and 8 were acquitted. No one has been executed under the Uniform Code of Military Justice since 1961.

Gathering evidence and securing the cooperation of witnesses can be bedeviling in far-flung places, and contributed to the collapse of the prosecutions against Marines linked to the killings of 24 men, women and children in the Iraqi city of Haditha. Charges were dropped against most of the Marines who were tried in that case. In another case — the murders of three Afghan civilians in the Maiwand District in Kandahar Province in 2010 by a rogue “kill team” from Sergeant Bales’s base, Lewis-McChord —11 of the 12 soldiers tried were convicted.

The procedures to come are well defined by the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Manual for Courts-Martial. The rules require a preliminary charging statement to be issued within days of a soldier being put behind bars. That is followed in coming months by a proceeding known as an Article 32 pretrial hearing, where prosecutors will present their evidence for convening a formal court-martial, leading to a recommendation from the presiding officer to higher command authority as to whether to hold a court-martial.

Only after the Article 32 hearing will the determination as to whether to seek the death penalty be announced. The court-martial would then go forward in two stages, one to establish guilt or innocence, and a second to determine sentencing.

Some of the elements of courts-martial differ from trials in the civilian realm. The military justice system does not allow a guilty plea in a death penalty case, but it does allow pleas that will lead to a lesser punishment. A determination of guilt or innocence, and the decision to sentence the defendant to death, must be unanimous.

If the supporting facts that underlie the accusations against Sergeant Bales are borne out and the military seeks the death penalty, much of the work of his legal team will shift to keeping him off death row. In speaking with reporters since the March 11 killings, Mr. Browne has discussed his client’s four combat deployments and suggested that Sergeant Bales could have been suffering from post-traumatic stress and the effects of concussive brain injury.

The military justice system does have the equivalent of the insanity defense, known as lack of mental responsibility, for which the standard of proof is very high. Mr. Fidell said such a defense is rarely successful, though “it could help soften the blow in terms of avoiding the death penalty.”

In the interview with CBS, Mr. Browne said he would not pursue the insanity defense, but would argue that his client had diminished capacity — apparently in an effort to seek mitigation of any punishment.

One issue that could loom large in the case is the risk that statements by those higher in the chain of command can have a prejudicial effect on members of the court-martial, a problem known as unlawful command influence. Among other statements, President Obama has called the killings “tragic and shocking,” and called President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan last week to pledge that the United States would “get the facts as quickly as possible and to hold accountable anyone responsible.”

Mr. Panetta has called the killings a “criminal act.” When asked whether there was a confession, said, “I suspect that that was the case.”

Jack B. Zimmermann, the co-chairman of the Military Law Committee of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said that in high-profile cases, military and civilian leaders were under tremendous pressure to issue statements. “Unfortunately, people in the secretary of defense’s position are caught between the political requirement to make some kind of statement and the danger of what we call unlawful command influence,” said Mr. Zimmermann, a retired Marine colonel. “Somebody should tell him to shut up.”

To James D. Culp, a military lawyer in Austin, Tex., the only question is one of degree. “Is there command influence in the case?” he said. “Undoubtedly. Does it rise to the level of unlawful command influence? We’ll see.” Mr. Fidell, however, noted that while unlawful command influence is often referred to as “the mortal enemy of military justice,” it is “very rare for a case to be set aside” on those grounds.

This court-martial will be closely watched around the world, and that will undoubtedly complicate the prosecution, said Douglas Berman, an expert on sentencing at Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University.

“Every high-profile case, civilian or military,” he said, “takes on dimensions and dynamics that are less familiar and less predictable because there are often interests, both expressed and implied, that transcend resolving this individual case justly. Everything that happens in this case is going to have direct international echoes in terms of the ongoing war effort.”

“Let me put it this way,” he said, “I’m real glad I’m not involved — on either side.”

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was found liable in financial fraud

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was found liable in financial fraud

By Mary Pat Flaherty, Krissah Thompson and Julie Tate, Published: March 19

TACOMA, Wash. — The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, figure prominently in the still-evolving portrait of Robert Bales, the Army staff sergeant being held in a massacre of 16 villagers in southern Afghanistan. Like many others, Bales enlisted out of a sense of civic responsibility, his friends and attorney have said.

But Bales’s decision to join the Army also came at a pivotal point in his pre-military career — a career as a stock trader that appears to have ended months after he was accused of engaging in financial fraud while handling the retirement account of an elderly client in Ohio, according to financial records.

An arbitrator later ordered Bales and the owner of the firm that employed him to pay $1.4 million — about half for compensation and half in punitive damages — for taking part in “fraud” and “unauthorized trading,” according to a ruling from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the independent disciplinary board for brokers and brokerage houses.

A review of the investor’s account statements, obtained by The Washington Post, shows that valuable stocks were sold off in favor of penny stocks as part of what the arbitrator called “churning” by Bales to pump up commissions.

The client, Gary Liebschner, a 74-year-old retired engineer for AT&T, said Sunday that he “never got paid a penny” of the award.

There is no indication that the civil ruling weighed on Bales in recent years. He never attended an arbitration hearing in the case — although he had been given legal notice of his right to present his version of events — and an attorney for Liebschner said it had been years since his client had attempted to collect the award from Bales.

But the finding of financial fraud adds to an increasingly complex picture of a man who, on the one hand, is described by friends and neighbors as a family man and an even-tempered soldier, and, on the other, had repeated encounters with the law, including an arrest on suspicion of drunken driving, involvement in a hit-and-run accident and a misdemeanor assault charge.

In addition to those incidents, he had evidently been under financial stress. His home near Tacoma was put up for a short sale a few days before the March 11 shootings in Afghanistan.

Bales is being held at a detention center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. He is expected to be formally charged in the coming days.

On Monday, his attorney, John Henry Browne, told the Associated Press that Bales has a sketchy memory of the night of the massacre and recalls very little about the time when military officials said the shootings occurred.

Browne did not respond to requests for interviews over the past several days. At the time of the complaint involving the stock trades, Bales did not have an attorney.

‘Heartbreaking tragedy’

Bales, a 38-year-old father of two, was on his fourth war tour when he reportedly walked out of his unit’s camp alone in the black of night in a rural area of Kandahar province and shot sleeping villagers, most of them women and children. As a member of the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, he had deployed three times to Iraq and once to Afghanistan from Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Tacoma.

Bales’s wife, Karilyn, issued a statement Monday describing the shooting as a “terrible and heartbreaking tragedy.”

“Our family has little information beyond what we read and see in the media,” she said. “What has been reported is completely out of character of the man I know and admire.”

Financial details

The period of Bales’s life immediately before he joined the Army has remained relatively opaque, even as details have emerged about his childhood and time overseas.

Financial records, however, indicate that Bales held a series of brokerage jobs from July 1996 through December 2000, spending little more than a year at each firm. In 1996, he passed an entry-level exam that permitted him to trade stocks, bonds and various municipal securities, and in 1997, he met a similar testing standard set by state regulators, records with Finra show.

Bales and his brother, Mark, formed an investment firm in Doral, Fla., in 2000 along with Marc Edwards, a former NFL player and longtime friend of Robert Bales’s from their days playing high school football together in Norwood, Ohio.

The company lasted less than a year and closed because of “market forces,” Edwards said through a spokeswoman Monday. Edwards added that the episode did not affect their friendship, saying that he viewed Bales as “a person with enormous integrity, courage and loyalty.”

‘Outraged’ clients

That is not the man that Liebschner said he dealt with when Bales was much younger and listed as the “investment executive” on his retirement account. The fund held stock that Liebschner had inherited and earned during his AT&T days, as well as other investments.

Although Liebschner said he would occasionally suggest a stock purchase — he bought stock in the Cleveland Indians for sentimental reasons, he said — he mostly had the firm where Bales worked manage the account.

A severe reaction to medication left Liebschner hospitalized and in a rehabilitation center from November 1998 until June 1999. At the time, his wife, Janet, who took time off from her nursing job, was pressed for money to cover car and mortgage payments, as well as the cost of renovations to their home to make it wheelchair-accessible, she said.

She hadn’t previously been in charge of the couple’s finances, she said, but after she began to examine account statements, she realized that the fund had been severely depleted.

Her husband’s retirement account had nearly $700,000 in 1998, his statements show. By early 2000, the fund had about $30,000 in it.

Once Janet Liebschner and her husband realized what had happened, they were “outraged,” she said.

Bales took them to dinner at a “very nice Columbus club” and assured them that the stocks would rebound, she said. Bales paid for dinner — “or I guess now I’d say we actually did,” Janet Liebschner, now 65, said ruefully.

The couple’s attorney, Earle R. Frost Jr., said he had called Bales and attempted to reach a settlement with him to avoid the arduous process of arbitration. Frost said that Bales declined and that the case moved forward.

“They found fraud,” Frost said, referring to the arbitrator’s decision. “I can’t say it any better than that.”

By the time the 2003 ruling for his clients was made, Frost had suffered a stroke that still impairs his speech, and although he spent about a year in 2003 trying to serve further legal action on Bales, he never succeeded.

Gary Liebschner said the reappearance of Bales raised his hope that he might get his money.

Thompson reported from Columbus, Ohio. Staff writers Carol Morello in Tacoma and Steve Mufson in Washington contributed to this report.

Afghan shooting tragic, but be wary of leniency

Column: Afghan shooting tragic, but be wary of leniency

By DeWayne Wickham

Even before the identity of the Army staff sergeant believed to have massacred 16 people in an Afghanistan village became known, excuses for his ghoulish acts of terror started popping up in the news media, diminishing the likelihood that justice will prevail in this case.

In one account, an unnamed military official said the suspect — who has since been identified as 38-year-old Robert Bales— had been drinking alcohol the night of the murderous rampage. Another official said he was distraught over an incident in which a fellow soldier's leg was blown off.

There were reports that Bales might have had marital and financial problems, and a story that he suffered a head wound during the last of his three deployments to Iraq. In some "chronic cases," that sort of injury "can lead to cognitive problems, personality changes and a loss of impulse control," TheNew York Timesreported after Bales was named as the lone suspect.

The details so far

What we know for certain is that nine children, three women and four men were killed. These innocent victims were attacked as they slept in villages that were supposed to be protected by soldiers on Bales' nearby base. The bodies of some of the victims were set on fire. That's the work of a murderous madman. But don't expect Bales to be treated like one if he's convicted of the late-night killing spree. History suggests otherwise.

Not one of the eight Marines charged in the 2005 massacre of 24 people in Iraq, including women, children and a man in a wheelchair, was imprisoned. One was acquitted, the charges against six others were dropped. The sergeant who admitted ordering his men to "shoot first and ask questions later" was given a plea bargain, serving no time behind bars.

And though William Calley, the Army lieutenant who ordered the 1968 attack that killed 500 unarmed people in the Vietnamese village of My Lai, was found guilty of personally killing 22 people, he served just three-and-a-half years of house arrest before President Nixon commuted his sentence.

A sympathetic public

In each case, public opinion among war-weary Americans opposed harsh punishment for these mass murderers, who were seen more as victims of unpopular wars — men who were driven over the brink by the bad decision-making of their superiors or of Washington policymakers.

Such shortsightedness damages more than the American concept of justice. It also does great injury to the democratic ideals we use to justify the continued presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. And when an American soldier who commits a crime gets off with little or no punishment, it devalues the lives of their foreign victims and creates tensions that put at risk the lives of other U.S. servicemembers who get targeted for retribution.

Of course, war can take a heavy emotional and psychological toll on those who are sent into battle. But that's no excuse for the brutal slaughter Bales is suspected of committing. Unfortunately, many news media organizations appear to suggest otherwise by putting more effort into looking for explanations for Bales' alleged bad acts than in trying to uncover the details of those heartless crimes.

To imply that a U.S. soldier who goes on a killing spree in a foreign land is less culpable because of the pressures of war slanders the incredibly good conduct of the millions of U.S. men and women who have served honorably in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The person who massacred the Afghan villagers deserves the contempt of this nation — and the unyielding judgment of its criminal justice system.

DeWayne Wickham writes on Tuesdays for USA TODAY.

Retiree - Afghan Murder Suspect Bales 'Took My Life Savings'

Afghan Murder Suspect Bales 'Took My Life Savings,' Says Retiree

ABC NewsBy BRIAN ROSS and MEGAN CHUCHMACH | ABC News

Robert Bales, the staff sergeant accused of massacring Afghan civilians, enlisted in the U.S. Army at the same time he was trying to avoid answering allegations he defrauded an elderly Ohio couple of their life savings in a stock fraud, according to federal documents reviewed by ABC News.

"He robbed me of my life savings," Gary Liebschner of Carroll, Ohio told ABC News.

Financial regulators found that Bales "engaged in fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, churning, unauthorized trading and unsuitable investments," according to a report on Bales filed in 2003. Bales and his associates were ordered to pay Liebschner $1,274,000 in compensatory and punitive damages but have yet to do so, according to Liebschner.

"We didn't know where he was," Liebschner told ABC News. "We heard the Bahamas, and all kinds of places."

Liebschner says he recognized Bales after news reports named him as the American soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan villagers in a shooting rampage.

Liebschner filed a complaint against Bales in May 2000, claiming Bales took his life savings of $852,000 in AT&T stock and through a series of trades reduced its value to nothing.

The Ohio retiree recalled Bales as a "smooth talker." Asked if he regarded Bales as a con man, Liebschner said, "You've hit the nail on the head."

At the time, Bales worked for an Ohio brokerage firm, MPI.

According to federal documents, Bales failed to appear at an arbitration hearing to resolve Liebschner's complaint.

Afghan killings suspect remembers little

Source

Afghan killings suspect remembers little, lawyer says

Mar. 19, 2012 05:25 PM

Associated Press

FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. - The lawyer for the Army staff sergeant accused of slaughtering 16 Afghan civilians in a nighttime shooting rampage met his client for the first time Monday and said the solider has a sketchy memory of the night of the massacre.

Lawyer John Henry Browne said Robert Bales remembers some details from before and after the killings, but very little or nothing from the time the military believes he went on a shooting spree through two Afghan villages.

"He has some memory of some things that happened that night. He has some memories of before the incident and he has some memories of after the incident. In between, very little," Browne told The Associated Press by telephone from Fort Leavenworth, where Bales is being held.

Pressed on whether Bales can remember anything at all about the shooting, Browne said, "I haven't gotten that far with him yet."

Bales, 38, has not been charged yet in the March 11 shootings, though charges could come this week. The killings sparked protests in Afghanistan, endangered relations between the two countries and threatened to upend American policy over the decade-old war.

Earlier Monday, Browne met with his client behind bars for the first time to begin building a defense and said the soldier gave a powerfully moving account of what it is like to be on the ground in Afghanistan.

Browne said he and Bales, who is being held in an isolated cell at the military prison, met for more than three hours in the morning at Fort Leavenworth. Browne, co-counsel Emma Scanlan and Bales were expected to talk again in the afternoon.

"What's going on on the ground in Afghanistan, you read about it. I read about it. But it's totally different when you hear about it from somebody who's been there," Browne told The Associated Press by telephone during a lunch break. "It's just really emotional."

Browne, a Seattle attorney who defended serial killer Ted Bundy and a thief known as the "Barefoot Bandit," has said he has handled three or four military cases. The defense team includes a military defense lawyer, Maj. Thomas Hurley.

At their meeting, Browne said Bales clarified a story, provided initially by the soldier's family, about the timing of a roadside bomb that blew off the leg of one of Bales' friends. It was two days before the shooting, not one, and Bales didn't see the explosion, just the aftermath, Browne said.

The details of the blast could not be immediately confirmed.

Military officials have said that Bales, after drinking on a southern Afghanistan base, crept away to two villages overnight, shooting his victims and setting many of them on fire. Nine of the dead were children and 11 belonged to one family.

Bales arrived at Fort Leavenworth last Friday and is being held in the same prison as other prominent defendants. Pfc. Bradley Manning, who is charged with leaking classified documents to the WikiLeaks website, has been held there on occasion as he awaited trial.

Bales is "already being integrated into the normal pretrial confinement routine," post spokeswoman Rebecca Steed said.

That includes recreation, meals and cleaning the area where he is living. Steed said once his meetings with his attorneys are complete later in the week, Bales will resume the normal integration process.

Bales' wife, Karilyn, offered her condolences to the victims' families Monday and said she wants to know what happened. She said her family and her in-laws are profoundly sad. She said what they've read and seen in news reports is "completely out of character of the man I know and admire."

"My family including my and Bob's extended families are all profoundly sad. We extend our condolences to all the people of the Panjawai District, our hearts go out too all of them, especially to the parents, brothers, sisters and grandparents of the children who perished," Karilyn Bales said in a statement. [Like that will bring the murdered women and children back to life]

Court records and interviews show that Bales had commendations for good conduct after four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He enlisted in the military after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

He also faced a number of troubles in recent years: A Florida investment job went sour, his Seattle-area home was condemned as he struggled to make payments on another, and he failed to get a recent promotion.

Legal troubles included charges that he assaulted a girlfriend and, in a hit-and-run accident, ran bleeding in military clothes into the woods, according to court records. He told police he fell asleep at the wheel and paid a fine to get the charges dismissed. [That is usually the same as pleading guilty to the charges]

In March 1998, Bales was given a $65 citation for possessing alcohol at Daytona Beach, Fla. He did not pay the fine nor did he defend himself in court. A warrant was issued for his arrest, but it later expired.

If the case goes to court, the trial will be held in the U.S., said a legal expert with the U.S. military familiar with the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the case. [Which why the Afghans think he will get a slap on the wrist, if that much]

That expert said charges were still being decided and that the location for any trial had not yet been determined. If the suspect is brought to trial, it is possible that Afghan witnesses and victims would be flown to the U.S. to participate, he said. [If you were one of the victims would you trust the US to fly you to America??]

After their investigation, military attorneys could draft charges and present them to a commander, who then makes a judgment on whether there is probable cause to believe that an offense was committed and that the accused committed it.

That commander then submits the charges to a convening authority, who typically is the commander of the brigade to which the accused is assigned but could be of higher rank.

Suspect in Afghan killings had shaky business dealings

Suspect in Afghan killings had shaky business dealings

Mar. 20, 2012 05:16 PM

Associated Press

CINCINNATI -- The U.S. suspect in the slaughter of 16 villagers in Afghanistan has a trail of shaky financial dealings -- from working in penny-stock boiler rooms that drew numerous client complaints, to an unpaid $1.5 million fraud judgment, to a failed investment partnership with a former high school football teammate, records show.

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales joined the Army in 2001 after a Florida investment business failed and after he had worked with a string of securities operations with one company official now barred from trading in Ohio. That broker and Bales were socked in 2003 with a $1.5 million arbitration ruling after an elderly couple charged that their holdings were decimated.

Bales responded to another client complaint by saying the company officer, Michael Patterson, had wrongly blamed Bales for bad trades for an elderly client.

Bales, 38, is being held in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., while a military investigation continues into the nighttime rampage in Afghanistan. His attorney said Tuesday he expects the case to be lengthy.

"Everyone has financial problems," attorney John Henry Browne said Tuesday of Bales' money problems, including a planned sale of his Seattle-area home for $50,000 less than he and his wife paid for it in 2005. "But you don't go around killing innocent women and children over financial problems."

Bales' investment career -- from 1996 to 2001 -- followed the rise and fall of the tech stock bubble, which burst in 2001, causing an historic stock-market crash months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. After college, he worked for a web of companies accused of numerous petty financial frauds, records show. Bales shuttled between five different companies tied to the same principals until 2000, when he founded the doomed venture with former NFL player Marc Edwards.

Bales joined the Army two months after Sept. 11, after a Florida business dissolved and 18 months after the Ohio couple charged him with fraud, unauthorized trading and breach of financial responsibility. That complaint was upheld in a 2003 arbitration. A second complaint in Ohio charged him with unauthorized trading.

Records show Bales told the state in that case that the trades were done by a company principal who "told the elderly client they were my responsibility" but that they were carried out after he had left the company, called MPI Financial.

Records show he never responded to the complaint that led to the $1.5 million judgment, issued a few months before he went on his first of three tours in Iraq.

Patterson, who ran a company called Michael Patterson Inc., is barred from dealing with securities in the state, Ohio Department of Commerce records show.

Patterson's former attorney said Tuesday he didn't know how to contact him.

Public filings with an industry regulator show Bales was registered to sell investments for five companies that appear to have been fronts for the same group: Hamilton-Shea, Quantum Capital, Michael Patterson Inc. (MPI), Capital Securities of America and Quantum Securities Corp.

All of the companies are related to Regis Securities Corp., which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2009. At the time, it was wholly owned by Robert Cargin, now president of Capital City Securities LLC in Columbus, Ohio. Cargin did not respond to requests for comment.

Hamilton-Shea was one of dozens of "pump-and-dump" operations that sprouted in Florida in the late 1990s. The so-called boiler rooms' salesmen pushed low stocks to boost prices, then dumped shares to grab profits.

While Bales worked there in 1999, Hamilton-Shea sold cheap stock for a medical-device company, Diabetic Services Inc., that was charged with overbilling the government for reimbursements and sold black-market products, according to a former employee's lawsuit.

The company later went public, before filing for bankruptcy protection. The employee later agreed to drop the lawsuit; the details of the case are sealed.

Hamilton-Shea ignored customer complaints, repeatedly misled customers about penny stocks it was selling, employed brokers who weren't properly registered and failed to supervise its brokers, regulatory records charged.

"It was an interesting outfit," said Brent Rosenthal, an attorney who helped represent two of the companies linked to Bales. "When you have these guys who do these penny stocks, it's like the used car salesmen of the securities world."

Three Hamilton-Shea principals were accused in a 29-count indictment of federal criminal fraud charges in 2001. Prosecutors said they accepted discounted stocks from companies with shaky finances, manipulating their prices and pocketing the profits. One served a five-year sentence for mail fraud and two others served a year and a day for conspiracy.

Bales was not mentioned in the indictment.

The couple that filed the complaint in the $1.5 million Ohio case says Bales never paid. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and Ohio records indicate no action was taken to revoke Bales' broker's license. Officials noted he hadn't been active for some three years.

In 2000, a year before he joined the Army, Bales joined a Florida company called Spartina Investments Inc. with former NFL player Marc Edwards, his Norwood, Ohio, high school teammate who went on to win the Super Bowl with the New England Patriots.

A spokeswoman for Edwards said Tuesday the business failed "as a result of marketplace and other issues."

Another high school teammate, Steve Berling, said he thought Bales got out of the business because he didn't like seeing his clients lose money.

Army officials and a military expert indicated Tuesday that Bales' dealings as an investment trader were unlikely to have come up as an issue during his enlistment. Detailed financial checks would be more likely if he needed a high security clearance.

John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, an expert on defense policy, said the military doesn't seem to closely track personal finances unless they are tied to a discipline problem or run-in with the law. He said the military runs credit checks and a national agency check on troops before they are given clearance to be deployed.

"If you can get a credit card, you can get a secret clearance," Pike said. He said, though, that Bales' issues as a broker probably would have kept him from qualifying for a top-secret clearance, not needed to be sent to war, or the types of assignments Bales was known to have had.

Bales' wife Karilyn had complained about her finances on her blog over the past year. The couple had tried to sell their residence in Lake Tapps, Wash., for 20 percent less than they paid for it, and abandoned a home they owned in Auburn, Wash., about 10 miles away.

"They were not dependable," said an unhappy Bob Baggett, their homeowners' association president in Auburn. "When they left, there were vehicle parts left on the front yard ... we'd given up on the owners."

Edwards, who lives in Jacksonville, Fla., issued a statement of concern Tuesday about "one of my oldest and best friends."

"I viewed him as a person with enormous integrity, courage and loyalty," Edwards said.

Slaying suspect first failed to mention children

Source: Afghanistan slaying suspect first failed to mention children

March 20, 2012 | 12:33 pm

REPORTING FROM WASHINGTON -- Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales initially asserted that he had shot several Afghan men outside a U.S. combat outpost in southern Afghanistan on March 11 and did not mention that a dozen women and children were among the dead, according to a senior U.S. official briefed on the case.

"He indicated to his buddies that he had taken out some military-aged males," the senior official said. Soldiers normally use that term to denote insurgents.

But Bales' story soon broke down when commanders on the base learned details of the pre-dawn shooting spree in which 16 Afghan civilians were killed in their homes. At that point, the 38-year-old Army veteran was taken into custody. He refused to talk further and soon asked for a lawyer, two officials said.

The accounts contradict widely published reports suggesting that Bales had confessed to a crime after the shootings. The account of Bales' first statement implied he might have asserted a legitimate military purpose for his alleged unauthorized foray to two nearby villages.

A U.S. official said the Army's Criminal Investigative Command, which is conducting the investigation into the case, is "looking closely at his story that he had killed some people."

The officials stopped short of calling Bales' alleged statement a confession, and it could not be learned if he had provided commanders at Combat Outpost Belamby, a small Special Forces base in Panjawi district, with a fuller account of his actions that night.

Asked by reporters last week if Bales had confessed, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta also hedged, saying, "I suspect that that was the case."

In revealing details about Bales' alleged statements after the shooting, U.S. officials may be attempting to undermine claims by his defense lawyer that his client had little memory of what happened that night.

Defense attorney John Henry Browne, told CBS News that Bales "has no memory of ... he has an early memory of that evening and he has a later memory of that, but he doesn't have memory of the evening in between."

Browne said he will not mount an insanity defense for Bales, but will argue that his client suffered from "diminished capacity," like an emotional breakdown.

Bales is being held in solitary confinement in an Army prison at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan. The Army is expected to bring formal charges against him later this week.

According to U.S. officials, Bales left the combat outpost at about 3 a.m. on March 11. He allegedly walked to two nearby villages and went house to house shooting families inside. He had been drinking alcohol before the incident, according to an official briefed on the investigation.

The Army has held off bringing charges against Bales, the officials said, because authorities are trying to make the charges as complete as possible to avoid any criticism that they aren't conducting a thorough investigation.

The officials asked not to be identified discussing an ongoing criminal investigation.

Afghan shooting suspect did not pay fraud judgment

Source

Afghan shooting suspect did not pay fraud judgment

Reuters

By Peter Henderson and Jed Horowitz

NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The U.S. soldier accused of killing 16 civilians in Afghanistan left for war without paying a $1.5 million judgment for defrauding an elderly client in a stock scheme, and remains shielded from the obligation as long as he remains in the military, legal experts said.

Before beginning his military career in November, 2001, Robert Bales worked almost five-and-a-half years at a series of largely intertwined brokerages that received repeated regulatory censures, according to regulatory records.

Bales joined the Army 18 months after an Ohio investor filed an arbitration complaint alleging unauthorized trading, breach of contract and other abuses against him, his securities firm and the firm's owner. In 2003, the arbitration panel ordered them to pay the investor $1.2 million, including $637,000 in punitive damages for willful or malicious conduct and $216,500 in attorneys' fees.

Bales never appeared before the panel and did not hire a lawyer to represent him.

Earle Frost, a lawyer for the victim, Gary Liebschner, said his client never received any of the payment ordered by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) panel.

He said Liebschner could have taken Bales to court to enforce the award, but "we couldn't find him."

By that time, Bales had embarked on an Army career that included three tours of duty in Iraq and a fourth in Afghanistan.

Even if Bales's victim had pressed the claim, Bales had protection under laws that shield members of the military from some financial obligations.

Any active-duty member of the military can apply for relief from outstanding financial obligations as long as he or she makes less in the service than before, said John Odom, a retired Air Force colonel and a partner at the law firm of Jones & Odom in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Bales, a staff sergeant, is expected to be charged this week in the March 11 killings of nine children and seven other civilians, who were gunned down in a late-night rampage.

His financial troubles add to the complex portrait of the man accused of the massacre.

His lawyer, John Henry Browne, did not respond to a request for comment on the NASD arbitration ruling. He has said Bales joined the army to defend the United States after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

His service in Afghanistan was complicated by mounting financial pressures back home, his lawyer has acknowledged. His home in Washington state had been listed for sale shortly before the alleged massacre.

Bales began his financial industry career in 1996 at Hamilton-Shea Group, a brokerage in Florida that was expelled from NASD in 2001 and fined $1.4 million over several issues, according to records from NASD and its successor organization, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).

Hamilton-Shea was "the kind of place where you learn to cold call, to 'pump and dump,'" said Joseph Dehner, a lawyer in Cincinnati, Ohio, who specializes in cases involving rogue brokers and firms.

Pump and dump refers to a practice in which firms artificially raise the prices of stocks they hold by aggressively selling shares to clients and then selling their own shares.

At least three Hamilton-Shea brokers who worked briefly with Bales pleaded guilty to violations of securities law after he left Florida to work in Ohio at Quantum Capital Corp., according to records from FINRA. Quantum also owned Hamilton-Shea.

Bales left Quantum in early 1998 to join Michael Patterson Inc., or MPI, whose eponymous owner had worked with him at both Hamilton-Shea and Quantum. Bales remained there until late 1999, then worked for two other Ohio brokerages until December 2000.

Patterson, whose firm was shuttered one month after Bales joined the Army, could not be reached for comment.

Neither FINRA nor the Ohio Divison of Securities ever suspended Bales, who simply let his securities license lapse, according to regulators. If an arbitration award is not paid within 30 days, FINRA can suspend a broker and would not allow him or her to join another firm during the suspension.

(Reporting By Nick Carey, Jed Horowitz and Peter Henderson.; Editing by Marilyn W. Thompson, David Brunnstrom and Paul Simao)

Soldier charged with 17 counts of murder in Afghan case

Soldier charged with 17 counts of murder in Afghan case

Mar. 22, 2012 03:41 PM

Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales will be charged with 17 counts of murder, assault and a string of other offenses in the massacre of Afghan villagers as they slept, a U.S. official said.

The charges signed against Bales include 17 counts of murder, six counts of attempted murder and six counts of aggravated assault as well as dereliction of duty and other violations of military law, the official said on condition of anonymity because the charges had not been announced.

The 38-year-old soldier and father of two who lives in Lake Tapps, Wash., is charged with going on a shooting rampage in two villages near his Southern Afghanistan military post in the early hours of March 11, gunning down nine Afghan children and eight adults and burning some of the victims' bodies.

The charges are to be read to Bales on Friday. He is being held in a military prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas and faces trial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

The killings were yet another blow to U.S-Afghan relations, following a series of missteps, including the accidental burning of Qurans, which prompted violent protests and revenge killings American troops in the war zone.

The brutal shooting rampage also prompted renewed debate in the United States about health care for the troops, who have experienced record suicide rates and high rates of post-traumatic stress and brain injuries during repeated deployments over a decade of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bales was on his fourth tour of duty, having served three tours in Iraq, where he suffered a head injury and a foot injury.

Bales' civilian attorney, John Henry Browne, has portrayed his client as a patriot, loving father and devoted husband who had been traumatized by a comrade's injury and sent into combat one too many times. [So is it OK for patriots to murder innocent civilians????]

"I'm not putting the war on trial," Browne has said, "but the war is on trial." He added: "If I can help create a discussion about the war, that would be a great way for me to go out." [so in the "war" going to prison for the 17 murders???]

Army officials have said Bales was cleared for return to duty after his head injury.

Bales joined the Army in 2001 after a Florida investment business failed and after he had worked with a string of securities operations. Bales and a broker at one company were hit in 2003 with a $1.5 million arbitration ruling after an elderly couple charged that their holdings were decimated.

Robert Bales was a drunk????

Robert Bales had history of alcohol, conflict before Afghanistan

By Kim Murphy

March 23, 2012, 6:00 p.m.

Reporting from Seattle—

As Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was charged Friday with the murder of 17 Afghan civilians, one of the key questions in the case will be whether Bales — as reported by a U.S. official familiar with the case — was drinking before the middle-of-the-night rampage.

Scrutiny is also likely to be focused on Bales' past brushes with the law, which show that he more than once had been drinking when ran into trouble with the police. Court records show a citation in Florida for having alcohol on a beach in 1998, a charge involving a drunken assault at a casino in 2002, a reported drunk driving arrest in 2005, an alcohol-infused brawl outside a bowling alley in 2008 and another case that same year — not specifically charged as drunk driving -- in which Bales rolled his car and was seen fleeing into the woods.

In the bowling alley case, Bales was “extremely intoxicated” when he approached a woman standing with her boyfriend outside the entrance, a Pierce County sheriff’s deputy wrote in his report.

“He was observed staggering. His eyes were glassy and there was a strong odor of alcoholic beverage about his person. Speech was mumbled and slurred. The effects of alcohol were extreme,” the officer wrote.

The woman, Myra Irish, said Bales walked up to her and told her she was “beautiful.”

“And then he grabbed my hand and put it on his crotch,” she said in an interview. “Then my boyfriend said, ‘You owe her an apology for that; that was rude.’ He wouldn’t do it, and the next thing I know he was kicking [my boyfriend]. He got him on the ground and started to whale on him.”

The security guards came and broke it up, and Bales’ friends, also apparently drunk, begged her not to file a report, Irish said.

“His friends told me, ‘Please don’t do a police report, ‘cause he’s married, he’s drunk, he’s in the service, and it would really ruin his life,' ” she said. Still, she opted to file the report at her boyfriend’s urging.

A Pierce County prosecutor’s office spokeswoman said prosecutors elected not to file charges because it was unclear who had started the fight. That may be because one of the only uninvolved witnesses — a friend of Bales who saw the whole thing — also had been drinking. The deputy said he couldn’t get any information out of him.

“He was unable to complete his sentences,” the officer wrote.

The 2002 case also happened outside a bar, this one at a casino, where Bales had been ordered to leave after threatening a customer. Before he did, he rushed at one of the security guards and struck him in the chest — earning himself a criminal assault charge.

He was arrested for drunk driving in 2005 but not charged, according to Washington State Patrol records cited by the Seattle Times, and at the time he was said to have a blood alcohol level of .14.

The 2008 hit-and-run charge stemmed from an incident in which officers found Bales’ car at the scene of a rollover accident in Sumner, Wash., on the two-lane highway near his home in Lake Tapps.

According to the police report, a witness reported seeing a white male leaving the scene of the accident and into the woods shortly after midnight. The man was wearing a military-style uniform, had a shaved head and was bleeding, the witness told police.

After authorities traced his car, Bales told them he had fallen asleep behind the wheel.

Charged with misdemeanor hit-and-run, Bales received a deferred 12-month sentence and was ordered to pay a fine of $250, after which the charge was dismissed.

Afghans: U.S. paid $50,000 per shooting spree victim

Source

Afghans: U.S. paid $50,000 per shooting spree victim

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) – The United States has paid $50,000 in compensation for each Afghan killed in the shooting spree attributed to a U.S. soldier in southern Afghanistan, an Afghan official and a community elder said Sunday.

The families of the dead received the money Saturday at the governor's office, said Kandahar provincial council member Agha Lalai. Each wounded person received $11,000 Lalai said. Community elder Jan Agha confirmed the same figures.

They were told that the money came from U.S. President Barack Obama, Lalai said.

A U.S. official confirmed that compensation had been paid but declined to discuss exact amounts, saying only that it reflected the devastating nature of the incident. The official spoke anonymously because of the sensitive nature of the subject.

A spokesman for NATO and U.S. forces declined to confirm or deny the payments, saying that while coalition members often make compensation payments, they are usually kept private.

"As the settlement of claims is in most cases a sensitive topic for those who have suffered loss, it is usually a matter of agreement that the terms of the settlement remain confidential," Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings said.

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales is accused of sneaking out of his base before dawn on March 11 then creeping into the houses of two nearby villages and opening fire on sleeping families within.

It was not immediately clear how much money had been paid out in all. Afghan officials and villagers have counted 16 dead — 12 in the village of Balandi and four in neighboring Alkozai — and six wounded. The U.S. military has charged Bales with 17 murders without explaining the discrepancy.

The 38-year-old soldier is accused of using his 9mm pistol and M-4 rifle, which was outfitted with a grenade launcher, to kill four men, four women, two boys and seven girls, then burning some of the bodies. The ages of the children were not disclosed in the charge sheet.

The families had previously received smaller compensation payments from Afghan officials.

Also Sunday, officials said that a bomb exploded in the south of the country as a foot patrol of Afghan and NATO forces was passing by the previous day, killing nine Afghans and one international service member.

The group was patrolling through Arghandab district in Kandahar province late Saturday when it was caught in the blast, said Shah Mohammad, the district administrator. Arghandab is a farming region just outside Kandahar city that has long been a bed-down area for Taliban insurgents. It was one of a number of communities around Kandahar city that were targeted in a 2010 sweep to oust the insurgency from the area.

The Afghan dead included one soldier, three police officers, four members of the Afghan "local police" — a government-sponsored militia force — and one translator, Mohammad said.

NATO reported earlier Sunday that one of its service members was killed in a bomb attack in southern Afghanistan on Saturday but did not provide additional details. It was not clear if this referred to the same incident, as NATO usually waits for individual coalition nations to confirm the details of deaths of their troops.

Investigators believe Bales split killing spree

Officials: Investigators believe Bales split killing spree

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.

Events focus on genocide awareness

Events focus on genocide awareness

Film screenings, exhibits on display around the Valley

by Luci Scott - Mar. 25, 2012 09:18 PM

The Republic | azcentral.com

April is Genocide Awareness Month in Arizona, and it kicks off early with a screening of a documentary, "The Last Survivor," on Tuesday at Arizona State University in Tempe.

One of the film's directors, Michael Kleiman, will be present to talk about the making of the film and how genocide survivors can be helped.

The film, to be screened at 6 p.m. in Room 241-C in ASU's Memorial Union, tells stories of survivors and focuses on genocide prevention and civic activism.

Another film, "Kony 2012," about African war criminal Joseph Kony, will be shown at 7 p.m. April 3 in Room 228 of the Memorial Union.

The film is being presented by the non-profit group Invisible Children, which works to combat the practice of using children as soldiers. This film is longer than the one that has gone viral on the Internet and stirred controversy over its accuracy.

On April 2, Scottsdale Community College will host an interactive event with two features: booths staffed by international groups and Camp Darfur, described as a traveling refugee camp consisting of a group of tents representing previous and current genocides.

The daylong activity will be in the mall west of the Applied Sciences Building.

"It brings attention to the ongoing genocide in Darfur, Sudan," said John Liffiton, co-coordinator, with Larry Tualla, of the college's Honors Program, the host of the activities.

Visitors will learn about modern Darfur as well as such previous mass murders as the Holocaust, the Turks' slaying of Armenians during World War I and mass killings in Cambodia and Rwanda.

"When people think of the Holocaust, they think of World War II, but genocide is still happening today," Liffiton said.

He is a professor in the college's English department and director of the English as a Second Language Program.

Camp Darfur is open to the public April 3-4 at GateWay Community College, 108 N. 40th St.

On April 5, a screening of "Kony 2012" is scheduled for 7 p.m. in the auditorium of Dobson High School, 1501 W. Guadalupe in Mesa. It is free and open to the public.

An entire day of activities for the students will include guest speakers and films as well as the Camp Darfur exhibit, said English teacher Kim Klett, who teaches a course on the Holocaust.

For more information, go to darfurandbeyond.org.

Unborn Afghan Child Said to Be 17th Victim of Killing Spree

Unborn Afghan Child Said to Be 17th Victim of Killing Spree

By ROD NORDLAND

Published: March 26, 2012

KABUL, Afghanistan — The United States military has charged Staff Sgt. Robert Bales with murder for the death of the unborn baby of one of the victims, a senior Afghan police official said on Monday.

That would explain the ongoing discrepancy between American and Afghan officials over whether Sergeant Bales killed 17 Afghan civilians, according to the military’s formal charges, or 16, the number of dead according to Afghan officials.

“The Americans are right and one of the females was pregnant, which is why they are saying 17,” Kandahar Province Police Chief Brig. Gen. Abdul Raziq said.

American officials were not immediately available for comment, and a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force referred all questions to the United States Army in Washington State, where Sergeant Bales’s unit was based.

Afghan and American officials have said that American officials have paid compensation to the family members of the 16 dead and six wounded victims last Saturday ; at the rate of $50,000 for each fatality and $11,000 for each wounding, that totals $866,000.

Other Afghan officials still insisted Monday that only 16 persons were killed in the rampage on March 11. “The foreigners have made a mistake,” said Ahmed Jawed Faisal, head of the Kandahar Media Information Center. “There is no 17th person dead. According to our records, it is 16.”

He released the government’s list of the names of those 16 victims, and also said none of the six wounded victims had died.

American military officials also had initially reported that Sergeant Bales had killed 16 civilians.

Charging Sergeant Bales with the death of a fetus would explain the discrepancy and under a seldom-used section of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the death of an unborn baby could be considered a murder whether or not the killer was aware that his victim was pregnant and whether or not he had intended to kill the fetus.

Section 919a of the code, which also mirrors a similar United States federal law, states that, “Any person subject to this chapter who engages in conduct that violates any of the provisions of law listed in subsection (b) and thereby causes the death of, or bodily injury (as defined in section 1365 of title 18) to a child who is in utero at the time the conduct takes place, is guilty of a separate offense under this section.”

The section says, however, that the death penalty cannot be imposed in the death of the fetus, although it could be for premeditated murder of the mother. The section also exempts medical abortions from any penalty.

It was not immediately clear whether the mother of the murdered fetus was among the dead or the wounded in the case. Of the six wounded victims, three remain hospitalized. No autopsies were performed on the victims, who were buried immediately in accordance with local and Islamic customs.

The military’s charge sheet against Sergeant Bales lists 17 counts of murder with premeditation, and it lists the names of 16 of the victims — although those names are redacted on copies of the sheet released by the Army. On the fifth count, or specification, of murder, however, there is no name given, and the charge reads that Sergeant Bales murdered “a male of apparent Afghan descent by means of shooting him with a firearm.”

An unborn victim would not yet have had a name.

In a separate development on Monday, an Afghan National Army officer turned his weapon on British soldiers in southern Helmand Province, killing two of them before being shot to death himself, according to Ghulam Farooq Parwani, deputy commander of the 215th Afghan National Army Corps. He said the incident took place at the British-run headquarters of the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Lashkar Gah, the capital of the province.

NATO officials confirmed that there had been an attack killing two of its soldiers, but did not identify their nationality. Since a Koran burning incident last month, six American soldiers have been killed in apparently retaliatory killings by Afghan security forces.

Matthew Rosenberg, Sangar Rahimi, Jawad Sukhanya, and an Afghan employee of The New York Times in Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan contributed reporting.

Afghan killings: U.S. 'hiding evidence,' attorney says

Source

Afghan killings: U.S. 'hiding evidence,' attorney says

Mar. 30, 2012 03:49 PM

Associated Press

SEATTLE -- The attorney for the U.S. soldier accused of killing 17 Afghan civilians says the government is "hiding evidence" and not giving his defense team the cooperation they were promised.

The Army says officials have been following procedures and communicating with Staff Sgt. Robert Bales' defense team.

The disagreement over access to the evidence and help in getting interviews with witnesses in Afghanistan highlights the differences between military and civilian proceedings.

For one, military legal procedures don't require prosecutors to turn over certain information to the defense until several weeks before a preliminary hearing. And at this point, Bales' attorney, John Henry Browne, said there is no judge to complain to, as he would in a civilian trial.

"It's outrageous. What they are basically doing is hiding evidence," said Browne, adding that he now questions the strength of the military evidence since prosecutors are not sharing it.

"We'll see if they can prove their case," he said.

Dan Conway, a military attorney who represented one of four Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldiers convicted in the deliberate killings of three Afghan civilians in 2010, said the government doesn't appear to be doing anything wrong at this point.

Conway said prosecutors have little obligation to turn over evidence or help coordinate interviews.

"This is just going to be an uphill battle," he said.

Maj. Chris Ophardt, an Army spokesman, said in a statement that the prosecution will provide Bales' defense with evidence in accordance with court martial and military rules of evidence. Within these guidelines, Ophardt said, "the prosecution is and has been communicating with the defense."

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, after speaking to hundreds of Marines and sailors aboard the USS Peleliu off the San Diego coast, told reporters that he has made it clear that Bales should get "whatever information he would be entitled to under the military code of justice."

Bales is charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder. The military says he left his base in southern Afghanistan and went on a nighttime shooting rampage through two villages on March 11. Nine of the dead were children.

Browne said military prosecutors have gone back on their word. "Normally, we have cooperation with prosecutors and we get information. And in this case, they actually promised us if we sent people to Afghanistan ... that they would cooperate," he said.

The defense team said in a statement that its members attempted to interview injured civilians being treated at a hospital in Kandahar, but were denied access and told to coordinate with prosecutors.

The prosecution team interviewed the civilians, but the defense team said they were unable to after the people were released and no contact information was provided for them. The defense team said prosecutors are withholding information "while potential witnesses scatter."

Browne's team also said they have been denied access to the civilians' medical records, as well as video allegedly taken from a surveillance blimp showing Bales on the night of the killings.

Browne said being given access to information later won't work, especially with Afghan witnesses.

The defense will have a right to interview witnesses that could be called at trial, so the Army could then take the defense team into the villages with security or coordinate to have them come onto the military base.

But Conway said the challenges of interviewing witnesses now means the defense team may not be able to track down people to bolster their case -- such as witnesses unable to identify Bales or those who believe there were two shooters.

"If they want to talk to those witnesses, they're going to have to get an investigator and probably go to the village and talk to civilians themselves," Conway said.

Browne also said the military is planning to within the next two months conduct a comprehensive mental health evaluation of Bales at the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where he is being held.

He said the mental health evaluation would delay the preliminary legal hearing. He said at this point his team hasn't decided the defense strategy, such as mental issues or post-traumatic stress.

"Until we're convinced that the government has a case, we're not going to speculate what our defense would be," he said.

U.S. blocks investigation of Afghan massacre

Lawyer says U.S. blocks investigation of Afghan massacre

Reuters

By Bill Rigby

SEATTLE (Reuters) - The lawyer defending the U.S. soldier accused of murdering 17 Afghan civilians claims U.S. authorities are blocking his ability to investigate the incident.

John Henry Browne, the lawyer for Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, said U.S. forces in Afghanistan have prevented his team from interviewing injured civilians at a hospital in Kandahar, and are allowing other potential witnesses to scatter, making it difficult to track them down.

"When prosecutors don't cooperate, it's because they are concerned about the strength of their case," said Browne at a press conference at his downtown Seattle office on Friday.

Bales was formally charged last week with the murders of eight adults and nine children in a pre-dawn shooting rampage in southern Afghanistan on March 11, which further eroded U.S.-Afghan relations already strained by a decade of war.

He could face the death penalty if convicted.

No date has been set for a trial, but U.S. military prosecutors are putting together their case while Browne is preparing his defense.

Browne said he has a team of investigators in Afghanistan now, but they are receiving little cooperation from military prosecutors who filed the charges.

"We are facing an almost complete information blackout from the government, which is having a devastating effect on our ability to investigate the charges preferred against our client," he said in a statement released earlier on Friday.

A reliable account of the events of the night of the massacre has not yet emerged. A recent report indicated Afghan villagers doubt Bales acted alone. Other reports suggest Bales left his base twice during the night.

"I don't believe that's the case, but we don't know for sure at this point," Browne said on Friday.

Browne said his investigators had spoken to U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan but had not managed to contact any witnesses.

DENIED ACCESS

"When we tried to interview the injured civilians being treated at Kandahar Hospital we were denied access and told to coordinate with the prosecution team," Browne said in the earlier statement.

"The next day the prosecution team interviewed the civilians injured. We found out shortly after the prosecution interviews of the injured civilians that the civilians were all released from the hospital and there was no contact information for them." That means potential witnesses will scatter and could prove unreachable, Browne said.

Prosecutors had not shared their investigative findings with his team, and would not share images captured by a surveillance camera on a blimp above the base which the Army says shows Bales returning to the camp after the alleged shooting, he said.

The next step in the case is for Bales - who is being held at a military detention center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas - to undergo a mental assessment by Army doctors independent of both the prosecution and defense, to determine if he is fit to stand trial, known as a "sanity board" in the Army.

That could take several months, Browne said.

After that has occurred, the military justice system requires a preliminary hearing, known as an "Article 32" hearing, to establish whether there is a strong enough case to proceed to a court martial.

Browne said it was too early to say whether post-traumatic stress disorder would feature in his defense against the charges. "I don't know whether it will at all," said Browne.

"First thing we have to find out is whether the government has a case. Until we're convinced the government has a case, we're not going to start speculating on what our defenses are going to be."

(Reporting By Bill Rigby; Editing by Todd Eastham and Paul Simao)

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