JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. — The U.S. soldier who massacred 16 Afghan civilians last year in one of the worst atrocities of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars was sentenced yesterday to life in prison with no chance of parole.
“We wanted this murderer to be executed,” said Hajji Mohammad Wazir, who lost 11 family members in the attack by Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales. “We were brought all the way from Afghanistan to see if justice would be served. Not our way — justice was served the American way.”
Bales, 40, pleaded guilty in June in a deal to avoid the death penalty for his March 11, 2012, raids near his remote outpost in Kandahar province. That’s where he stalked through mud-walled compounds and shot 22 people — 17 of them women and children.
Bales showed no emotion as the sentence was announced. His mother, sitting in the front row of the court, bowed her head, rocked in her seat and wept.
An interpreter flashed a thumbs-up sign to a row of Afghan villagers who were either wounded or lost family members in the March 11, 2012, attack.
“I saw his mother trying to cry, but at least she can go visit him,” Hajji Mohammad Naim, who was shot in the neck, said after the sentencing. “What about us? Our family members are actually 6 feet under.”
The villagers, who traveled nearly 7,000 miles to testify against Bales, spoke with reporters and asked through an interpreter what it would be like for someone to break into American homes and slaughter their families.
Bales never offered an explanation for why he armed himself with a 9 mm pistol and an M-4 rifle and left his post on the killing mission, but he apologized on the witness stand Thursday and described the slaughter as an “act of cowardice, behind a mask of fear, bull---- and bravado.”
The six-member jury weighing whether he would be eligible for parole after 20 years took about 90 minutes to decide the case.
A commanding general overseeing the court-martial has the option of reducing the sentence to life with the possibility of parole.
Bales, an Ohio native who attended Norwood High School and Ohio State University, lived in Lake Tapps, Wash., and was under personal, financial and professional stress at the time. He had stopped paying the mortgage on one of his houses, was concerned about his wife’s spending and hadn’t received a promotion he wanted.