The American soldier accused of murdering 16 Afghans, mostly women and children, back in March, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales will appear at a preliminary hearing early next month, and one of the issues the court will deal with is a version of the story knocked around ever since the crime was committed: Bales did not act alone.
“There are witness statements that there was more than one shooter,” said Bales’s lead civilian lawyer, John Henry Browne, who will claim the government lacks enough evidence to prove his Bales’s guilt.
Eyewitness accounts of Afghan villagers established from the beginning that Bales was not the only soldier to methodically shoot and burn the bodies of 16 Afghan civilians. But he was the only one accused, with no other names coming to the authorities.
“Two Americans came into the room, and the kids started screaming,” said Bibi Massoma, whose husband, Mohammed Dawood, and children were murdered. While one soldier shot Massoma’s unarmed husband in the head, the other “stuck a pistol into the mouth of 6-month-old Hazaratullah,” reports the Daily Beast, “put his finger to his lips and said if the child did not stop crying he would kill all of them – which he proceeded to do.”
American soldiers who have committed heinous crimes against civilians in war zones have a history of getting off easy. And in an ironic way, the suggestion that Bales did not act alone “could, in fact, help Browne compel a settlement for his client, who faces the death penalty if convicted—and ensure that the public never learns what really happened that night,” according to the Daily Beast.
The preliminary hearing will take place one day before the presidential election next month and will last two weeks. The real trial is a long, undetermined, way away.
Give him to the people of Afghanistan. People like him are nothing to be proud of and it does not matter if he acted alone. It pains me that he will be referred to as a hero.
Re: "…referred to as a hero."
Immediately after this story broke the local web sites, blogs, etc., hereabouts in upstate NY – the locale of Ft Drum – had many, many comments in the vein of "he didn't kill enough" or "good job", etc.
Give them to the people of Afghanistan, too.
No doubt this war criminal will just receive a slap on the wrist like the Marine scumbags who urinated on the dead Afghans. Meanwhile, the one real hero in the whole cowardly US military, Bradley Manning, continues to rot in jail, suffering abuse and mistreatment.
Thanks for the update on this case, John. As Lily Tomlin said, No matter how cynical you get, it's not enough to keep up…
That Tomlin quote got used by me at least 3 times this year. I really thought I had a basement for my cynicism but life & Antiwar.com remind me that one cannot go wrong assuming the worst in human behavior.
He probably didn't but it's not as if the public will ever know the truth of what really happened. After all, it's not as if the forces that be have any vested interest in the truth.
Bales will surely have his deeds elevated in a blockbuster movie soon, one that shows how one man, an American of course, could kill 16 of the enemy on his own.
The movie would show that the women and children were all highly trained, crazed Islamists who were preparing to attack the American Base.
Bales might even get the lead role!
Who knows? They're not witnessing.
He would be wise to claim others were with him and he doesn't remember who.
He could also remember he didn't kill anybody, or probably wasn't with them at all.
Best defense of a 'massacree' yet.