Afghan killings suspect 'remembers little'
A US Army Staff Sergeant accused of slaughtering 16 Afghan civilians in a night-time shooting spree remembers little about the incident, his lawyer has said.
Robert Bales has a sketchy memory of events from before and after the killings but recalls very little or nothing of his alleged shooting rampage through two Afghan villages, lawyer John Henry Browne said after meeting his client for the first time.
Mr Browne and other members of Bales’ defence team have said they plan additional meetings this week with the soldier, who is being held at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.
Meanwhile, more details have come to light about Bales’s problems at home.
Records show he owes $1.5m (€1.1m) from an arbitration ruling nearly a decade ago which found him guilty of securities fraud.
The ruling stemmed from a complaint by a man from Columbus, Ohio, that Bales defrauded him and his wife while working as their stockbroker in 2003.
Bales, 38, has not yet been charged over in the March 11 shooting spree, though charges could come this week. The killings sparked protests in Afghanistan, endangered relations between the two countries and threatened American policy over the decade-old war.
Mr Browne met his client behind bars for the first time to begin building a defence.
“He has some memories of before the incident and he has some memories of after the incident. In between, very little,” Mr Browne told The Associated Press by telephone.
Pressed on whether Bales can remember anything about the shooting, the lawyer said “No”, but added: “I haven’t gotten that far with him yet.”
In an earlier interview with CBS, Mr Browne said unequivocally that Bales cannot remember the shootings.
Bales arrived at Fort Leavenworth last Friday and is being held in an isolated cell. He is “already being integrated into the normal pre-trial confinement routine”, prison spokeswoman Rebecca Steed said.
The routine includes recreation, meals and cleaning the area where he is living. Ms Steed said that, once his meetings with his lawyers are complete later in the week, Bales will resume the normal integration process.
Mr Browne said he and Bales met for more than three hours at the military prison.
He said the soldier gave a powerfully moving account of what it is like to be on the ground in Afghanistan.
“You read about it. I read about it. But it’s totally different when you hear about it from somebody who’s been there,” he told the AP. “It’s just really emotional.”
Mr Browne, a Seattle lawyer who defended serial killer Ted Bundy and a thief known as the “Barefoot Bandit”, said he has handled three or four military cases. The defence team also includes a military defence lawyer, Major Thomas Hurley.
Military officials have said that Bales, after drinking on a southern Afghanistan base, crept away to two villages overnight, shooting his victims and setting many of them on fire. Nine of the dead were children and 11 belonged to one family.
Bales’s wife, Karilyn, offered her condolences to the victims’ families and said she wants to know what happened. She said her family and her in-laws are profoundly sad, and that what they have read and seen in news reports is “completely out of character of the man I know and admire”.
Court records and interviews show Bales had commendations for good conduct after four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He enlisted in the military after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
He also faced a number of problems in recent years: his Florida investment job went sour, his Seattle-area home was condemned as he struggled to make payments on another, and he failed to get a recent promotion. He also still faces the $1.5m securities fraud judgment from 2003.
The National Association of Securities Dealers found that Bales, another man and his company “engaged in fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, churning, unauthorised trading and unsuitable investments”.
Records show that Gary Liebschner of Columbus, Ohio, filed the complaint in 2000, when Bales was a stockbroker.
WCPO-TV in Ohio quoted Mr Liebschner’s wife as saying her husband became ill so they asked Bales to sell stock to pay his medical bills, but never received the proceeds.
An arbitration panel found Bales, Michael Patterson and Michael Patterson Inc individually and jointly liable for $637,000 in compensatory damages, $637,000 in punitive damages, $216,500 in legal fees and several thousand dollars in other fees.
Punitive damages were allowed because the panel found Bales’s conduct “fraudulent and malicious”.
Bales did not file a “statement of answer”, get a lawyer or appear at an Ohio hearing, records show.
About a year and a half after the complaint was filed, Bales enlisted – just two months after 9/11.
His legal troubles included charges that he assaulted a girlfriend and, in a hit-and-run accident, ran bleeding in military clothes into the woods, according to court records. He told police he fell asleep at the wheel and paid a fine to get the charges dismissed.
In March 1998, Bales was fined 65 dollars for possessing alcohol at Daytona Beach, Florida. He did not pay the penalty nor did he defend himself in court. A warrant was issued for his arrest, but it later expired.
If the Afghanistan case goes to court, the trial will be held in the US, said a legal expert
That expert said charges were still being decided and the location for any trial had not yet been determined. If the suspect is brought to trial, it is possible that Afghan witnesses and victims would be flown to the US to participate, he said.
After their investigation, military lawyers could draft charges and present them to a commander, who then makes a judgment on whether there is probable cause to believe that an offence was committed and that the accused committed it.
That commander then submits the charges to a convening authority, who typically is the commander of the brigade to which the accused is assigned but could be of higher rank.
