Definition: In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Input: Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs was found guilty in a military court Thursday of being the leader of a U.S. Army thrill kill team that murdered three Afghan civilians for sport. 
  
 He was sentenced to life in prison, but will be eligible for parole in nine years. Gibbs was also found guilty of 12 related charges, including taking body parts as trophies from corpses. 
  
 Three soldiers who have already pled guilty in the case testified against Gibbs, who was accused of masterminding a scheme to kill unarmed civilians and then plant weapons to make the deaths appear justified. 
  
 "Sergeant Gibbs had a charisma, he had a 'follow me' personality," prosecutor Maj. Robert Stelle said in closing arguments Wednesday. "But it was all a bunch of crap. He had his own mission: murder and depravity." 
  
 Gibbs's defense attorney, Phillip Stackhouse, had argued that the other witnesses had framed Gibbs for the deaths, and that some admitted they had been under the influence of hashish while serving in Afghanistan. 
  
 Gibbs, who testified in his own defense, denied murdering civilians, but did admit to taking trophies from Afghans he said were killed legitimately. He compared cutting fingers from his human kills to "keeping antlers" from deer he'd shot. 
  
 The five-member jury at the Army's Joint Base Lewis-McChord south of Seattle deliberated for four hours before finding Gibbs guilty. 
  
 Twenty-six-year-old Gibbs, of Billings, Montana was among five soldiers from Lewis-McChord charged with taking part in the thrill kills in 2010 in a case that included allegations of widespread drug use, the collection of body parts and photos of the U.S. soldiers holding the Afghan bodies like hunter's trophies. 
  
 In a confession taped in May 2010 and obtained by ABC News, one of the soldiers admitted the team's role in the murders, but told Army investigators that Gibbs, his unit's "crazy" sergeant, had hatched the plan. 
  
 READ: Confession Video: U.S. Soldier Describes Thrill Kill of Innocent Afghans 
  
 "He just really doesn't have any problems with f---ing killing these people," Jeremy Morlock told military investigators during an interview videotaped at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan as he laid out the scenario he said the sergeant used to make it seem the civilians were killed in action. 
  
 "And so we identify a guy. Gibbs makes a comment, like, you know, you guys wanna wax this guy or what?" Morlock said." And you know, he set it up, like, he grabbed the dude." 
  
 Morlock said that killing people came "too easy" to Gibbs. 
  
 The corporal said Gibbs gave orders to open fire on the civilian at the same time Gibbs threw a hand grenade at the victim. 
  
 "He pulled out one of his grenades, an American grenade, you know, popped it, throws it, tells me where to go to whack this guy, kill this guy, kill this guy," Morlock told the investigators. 
  
 Morlock said Sergeant Gibbs carried a Russian grenade to throw next to the body of the dead Afghan, to make it seem he was about to attack the American soldiers. 
  
 The corporal said he opened fire as directed, fearful of not following Gibbs' orders. 
  
 "It's definitely not the right thing to do," Morlock told the investigators. "But I mean, when you got a squad leader bringing you into that, that type of real, that mindset, and he believes that you're on board with that, there's definitely no way you wanted him to think otherwise." 
  
 The investigator asked Morlock, "Because you felt maybe the next shot might be coming your way?" 
  
 "You never know. Exactly," answered Morlock. "I mean Gibbs talked about how easy it is, people disappear on the battlefield all the time." 
  
 A lawyer for Gibbs declined to comment. In March, Morlock pled to three counts of premeditated murder and was sentenced to 24 years in prison. 
  
 Holmes Kept Finger Bone from Victim 
  
 In September, Pfc. Andrew Holmes, of Boise, Idaho pled guilty to the unpremeditated murder of the first victim, as well as to drug use and to keeping a finger bone from the victim as a souvenir. Holmes had also posed for a photo, later leaked to the media, in which he held up the head of the dead victim. 
  
 Holmes, 21, admitted to the judge that he had fired his machine gun at the victim, that he knew the man was probably innocent , and that he believed he had caused the man's death. 
  
 Spc. Adam Winfield, who warned his parents that soldiers in his unit were executing innocent Afghan civilians, pled guilty in August to reduced charges and was sentenced to three years in prison for his role in the third killing, which took place in May 2010. He had been charged with premeditated murder, which carries a sentence of life in prison without parole. 
  
 Both Morlock and Winfield told Army investigators that Gibbs developed and rehearsed the murder of unarmed Afghans and later ordered his men to help him carry them out. 
  
 Spc. Michael S. Wagnon II, who is still awaiting trial, has pled not guilty. Wagnon is charged with participating in a cover-up of the second killing, which occurred in February 2010, as well as conspiracy and possessing a human skull fragment. 
  
 A lawyer for Wagnon has previously assailed Morlock's testimony, noting he requested investigative documents prior to testimony. 
  
 READ: 'Repugnant' Photos Emerge of U.S. Soldiers Accused of Sport Killings 
  
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 Click Here for the Blotter Homepage. ||||| TACOMA, Wash (Reuters) - A U.S. Army sergeant was convicted by court-martial on Thursday of murdering unarmed civilians and cutting fingers from corpses as ringleader of a rogue platoon that terrorized villagers in Afghanistan's Kandahar province. 
  
 The guilty verdict on all counts, returned after five hours of deliberations, carried an automatic life prison sentence, but the five-member jury panel then decided that Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs, 26, would be eligible for parole in 8-1/2 years. 
  
 The verdict and sentence capped an 18-month investigation of the most egregious atrocities that U.S. military personnel have been convicted of committing during a decade of war in Afghanistan. 
  
 Pentagon officials have said the misconduct exposed by the case, which evolved from a probe of drug abuse within Gibbs' Stryker Brigade infantry unit, had damaged the image of the United States around the globe. 
  
 Photographs entered as evidence in the case showed Gibbs and other soldiers casually posing with bloodied Afghan corpses, drawing comparisons to the inflammatory Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq in 2004. 
  
 The decisions by the jury panel -- two enlisted personnel and three officers -- came on the eve of Veterans Day and followed a week and a half of testimony at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, near Tacoma. 
  
 Gibbs, who has denied committing murder, declined to speak before sentencing. 
  
 His civilian lawyer, Phillip Stackhouse, asked the panel for leniency in its parole decision, saying Gibbs had ample time for reflection during his pretrial confinement and "is not the same person he was when he went to Afghanistan." 
  
 He added that his client wished for the chance to be reunited with his young son at some point in the future. 
  
 But military prosecutor Major Dre Leblanc argued against parole, reminding the panel that Gibbs had often said of the Afghan people he terrorized: "These people are all savages, look at how they live." 
  
 Gibbs was convicted on three counts of premeditated murder in the slayings of Afghan villagers last year that were disguised as legitimate combat engagements. Prosecutors said he acted as the chief instigator behind those killings and other assaults by members of his self-described "kill team". 
  
 Besides charges of murder, conspiracy and other offenses, he was found guilty of beating a soldier who reported hashish use to superiors and of military code violations for cutting fingers off bodies as war trophies. A single count of threatening another soldier was dismissed earlier this week. 
  
 TROUBLED SOLDIER 
  
 Gibbs had maintained he was innocent of murder, insisting that two of the killings for which he was charged were in self defense and that he played no role in the other. He denied allegations of planting weapons near the bodies. 
  
 Testifying in his own defense on Friday, Gibbs said he had "disassociated" himself from his actions while in combat and likened the removal of fingers from dead bodies to the taking of antlers from a deer. 
  
 In closing arguments on Wednesday, defense lawyer Stackhouse cast Gibbs as a troubled soldier doing his best to bear up under tremendous stress in a hostile environment. 
  
 Stackhouse had sought to raise doubts about the prosecution's case by pointing to a lack of physical evidence in the case. He argued that key witnesses had testified under plea deals in which they received more lenient sentences than they otherwise might have faced. 
  
 He also seized on conflicting accounts by witnesses whose recollections, he said, were clouded by a "haze of hashish." 
  
 Prosecution witnesses had portrayed Gibbs as a blood-thirsty renegade who intimidated fellow soldiers and harbored a deep, ethnic hatred of the very people U.S. troops were sent to protect from Taliban forces. 
  
 His chief accuser was the ex-corporal described as Gibbs' right-hand man, Jeremy Morlock, who pleaded guilty to murder for his role in the same three killings and was sentenced in March to 24 years in prison under a deal with prosecutors to obtain his cooperation in the case. 
  
 Five soldiers from the infantry unit formerly called the 5th Stryker Brigade were accused of murder, though Gibbs and Morlock were the only ones charged with more than one killing. 
  
 A third co-defendant, Adam Winfield, has pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter and was sentenced to three years in prison. A fourth, Michael Wagnon, still faces a court-martial. 
  
 Seven other men charged with lesser offenses in the investigation have received convictions and sentences ranging from demotion or dishonorable discharge to 60 days of hard labor and jail sentences of up to nine months. 
  
 (Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Cynthia Johnston) |||||
Output:
Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs "had a charisma, a 'follow me' personality," a prosecutor told a military court this week. "But it was all a bunch of crap. He had his own mission: murder and depravity." Gibbs, leader of a "thrill kill" gang of US soldiers that killed unarmed Afghan civilians for sport, has been found guilty of murder and other charges including taking body parts from corpses for trophies, and beating a soldier who reported his hashish use to superiors, ABC reports. Three soldiers from the rogue platoon who already pleaded guilty testified against the 26-year-old soldier. The charges against Gibbs carried an automatic life sentence, but the jury panel—two enlisted personnel and three officers—decided that he will be eligible for parole in less than nine years, Reuters reports. In his defense, Gibbs told the court that he had "disassociated " himself from his actions in combat. He likened his removal of fingers from corpses to the taking of antlers from a deer.