TACOMA, WASH, Aug 20: A US army soldier who in June admitted the slaughter of 16 Afghan civilians has declined to withdraw his guilty plea in a military court.
US Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales made his decision in advance of legal arguments set to begin today that will determine whether his life sentence will come with the possibility of parole.
“I’m just trying to do the right thing,” he said in a hearing Monday to establish ground rules for the roughly week-long sentencing proceedings.
The judge, Army Colonel Jeffery Nance, asked Bales whether he wanted to withdraw the guilty plea in light of possible misinformation about the length of time before he could be eligible for parole.
Under a plea agreement that accompanied the plea, Bales will be spared the death penalty and could be eligible for parole after 20 years, less time already served and credit for good behavior.
Bales pleaded guilty in June to walking off his base in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province before dawn on March 11, 2012, and killing 16 unarmed civilians, most of them women and children, in attacks on their family compounds.
The slayings marked the worst case of civilian slaughter blamed on a single, rogue US soldier since the Vietnam War and further strained US-Afghan relations after more than a decade of conflict in that country.
(AGENCIES)
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