US soldier could face death penalty after being charged with 17 murders

Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales could face the death penalty if convicted.

A spokesman for US forces in Afghanistan said Bales has also been charged with six counts of attempted murder and six counts of assault.

The 38-year-old father of two, from Lake Tapps, Washington state, is accused of leaving a US military post on 11 March, killing nine Afghan children and eight adults and burning some of the bodies in Panjwai district of Kandahar province.

Six other Afghan civilians were injured in the attack.The incident was the worst allegation of civilian killings by an American and has been a massive blow to US-Afghan relations in the decade-old war.

It is unclear what prompted the killings, but the case has drawn new attention to the debate over mental health care for the troops, who have experienced record suicide rates and high incidences of post- traumatic stress and brain injuries during repeated deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bales was officially informed of the 29 charges just before noon local time at the US military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he is being held.

His lawyer, John Henry Browne, said that he believes the government will have a hard time proving its case and that his client’s mental state will be an important issue. Bales was on his fourth tour of duty, having served three tours in Iraq, where he suffered head and foot injuries.

The decision to charge him with premeditated murder suggests that prosecutors plan to argue that he consciously conceived the killings.

The maximum punishment for a premeditated murder conviction is death, as well as dishonourable discharge from the armed forces, reduction to the lowest enlisted grade and total forfeiture of pay and allowances. The mandatory minimum sentence is life imprisonment with the chance of parole.

Experts say the death penalty would be unlikely in the case. The military has not executed a service member since 1961, when an army ammunition handler was hanged for raping an 11-year-old girl in Austria.

None of the six men currently on death row at Fort Leavenworth was convicted for atrocities against foreign civilians. The charges against Bales did not provide details about the killings or whether the gunman acted alone.

Browne has said his client remembers very little or nothing from the time the military believes he went on the rampage.

He said Bales had earlier suffered a “serious” concussion that was not treated.

The pre-dawn shooting spree has fuelled anti-American sentiment in a country where violent protests raged for nearly a week last month after the Koran ended up burning in a rubbish tip at a US base.