Army names suspect in killings of 16 Afghans

The enthusiast charged of slaughtering 16 Afghan villagers as they rested, Personnel Sgt. John Bales, is in legal care at a U.S. army jail at Ft Leavenworth, Might, after coming overdue Exclusive evening, the Military said.
Bales, 38, who enhanced up in the Cincinnati position and was in his 4th deal with performance, was founded by name by the Military as he was came again to the U. s. Reviews five times after he is received of going on a obtaining quinton fitzgibbons near his groundwork in the Kandahar position of the southern region element of Afghanistan.


The Military said he was being offered in pre-trial individual confinement at the Place Combined Local Correctional Functionality at Ft Leavenworth. The Military represents the jail as a state-of-the-art medium-custody capability.
A symbol of Bales, who is committed with two kids in California state, started to appear soon after his name was launched. Criminal information show problems with the law, such as an police detain for attack. But stunned others who live nearby in Pond Tapps, Clean., where he resided with his spouse Karilyn, said they realized Bales as a friendly family man.

Bales is 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.

In contrast, Bales is described in a 2009 Army report from Fort Lewis as being sensitive to local Iraqis after his unit helped rescue a downed Apache helicopter in Najaf in January 2007.

"We discriminated between the bad guys and the combatants, and then afterward we ended up helping the people that three or four hours before were trying to kill us,'' Bales is quoted as saying in February 2009. "I think that's the real difference between being an American as opposed to being a bad guy, someone who puts his family in harm's way like that."

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 convic.,ted soldiers sentenced up to five years confinement and has a 464-person capacity.

Bales has not yet been charged.

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, 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."