The U.S. soldier accused of carrying out the massacre of 16 Afghan civilians during nighttime raids on two villages last year deferred entering a plea Thursday to charges that could bring the death penalty.
Army prosecutors on Tuesday asked an investigative officer to recommend a death penalty court-martial for an Army staff sergeant accused of killing 16 Afghan villagers in a predawn rampage, saying that Staff Sgt. Robert Bales committed "heinous and despicable crimes."
Investigators in the Indianapolis explosion that killed two people and decimated a neighborhood believe natural gas was involved and are focusing on appliances as they search for a cause, a city official said Tuesday.
Through a video monitor in a military courtroom near Seattle, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales saw young Afghan girls smile beneath bright head coverings before they described the bloodbath he's accused of committing. From the other side of that video link, in Afghanistan, another man saw something else: signs that justice will be done.
Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was largely calm and compliant when he turned himself in following a predawn massacre at two Afghan villages in March, witnesses testified Tuesday.
Staff Sgt. Robert Bales spent the evening on his remote outpost in southern Afghanistan with fellow soldiers, watching a movie about revenge killings, sharing whiskey from a plastic bottle and discussing an attack that cost one of their friends his leg.
The soldier accused of killing 16 villagers in a nighttime rampage in Afghanistan returned to his base wearing a cape and with the blood of his victims on his rifle, belt, shirt and pants, a military prosecutor said Monday.
The soldier accused of killing 16 villagers in a nighttime rampage in Afghanistan returned to his base wearing a cape and with the blood of his victims on his rifle, belt, shirt and pants, a military prosecutor said Monday.
