Spc. Ryan Hallock/AP - The preliminary hearing for Staff Sgt. Robert Bales accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians in March, begins today, with villagers expected to testify by video from Kandahar Air Field in Afghanistan.
JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. — An Army staff sergeant accused of massacring 16 civilians in southern Afghanistan in the spring showed no remorse as he was taken into custody, one of his comrades testified Monday during the soldier’s first day in court.
“I thought I was doing the right thing,” Staff. Sgt. Robert Bales told Cpl. David Godwin, the latter testified. Describing the sergeant’s demeanor that morning, Godwin said Bales looked like “he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.”
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The opening of Bales’s Article 32 hearing — the military equivalent of a grand jury proceeding — provided new details about the March 11 massacre, including an alleged attempt by Bales to destroy evidence by asking Godwin to bleach his blood-stained pants.
Lt. Col. Joseph Morse, the lead prosecutor, said Bales was “deliberate and methodical” that day, despite having been drinking scotch the previous night. But he offered no substantive motive for the rampage, one of the most barbaric crimes attributed to U.S. troops in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nine of the victims were children.
Morse said during his opening statement that Bales had previously visited one of the two compounds where civilians were killed, suggesting the sergeant knew the dwelling was home to women and children.
The defense opted not to give an opening statement before the judge, Army Col. Lee Deneke, who will determine at the end of the two-week hearing whether the government has enough evidence for a court-martial. Bales could get the death penalty if convicted. There are five soldiers on death row, but no American service member has been executed since 1961.
In cross-examining witnesses, defense attorney Emma Scanlan drew attention to a spate of incidents in the weeks prior to the massacre during which Bales was uncharacteristically irritable. That raised the possibility that the defense may argue that military leaders missed warning signs about the sergeant’s mental state.
Bales, 39, was charged with 16 counts of first-degree murder after military investigators implicated him in the shootings of civilians in two villages adjacent to a NATO base in the impoverished Panjwai district of Kandahar province.
Villagers who have agreed to provide testimony over a video link-up from Afghanistan are expected to give the most detailed public account to date of what happened during the pre-dawn hours after Bales reportedly left his base alone and broke into their homes.
“We are willing to collaborate with the U.S. as witnesses,” Mullah Baran, the brother of one of the victims, Mohamed Daoud, said in a phone interview. “If the trial is in the U.S., we will go by plane. If it is in Kandahar city, we will go by car. And if it is in Panjwai, we will attend on foot.”
The soldiers who testified on Monday provided new details about the shooting and life on the small base during the days before it. Comrades said Bales was angry his unit had not done more to find the culprits of a bombing that blew off the left leg of a Navy explosives expert during a patrol on March 5.
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