WASHINGTON — Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales will be charged today with 17 counts of murder, assault and a string of other offenses in the massacre of Afghan villagers as they slept, a U.S. official said Thursday.
The charges against Bales include 17 counts of murder, six counts of attempted murder and six counts of aggravated assault as well as dereliction of duty and other violations of military law, the official said on condition of anonymity because the charges had not been announced.
The 38-year-old soldier and father of two, who lives in Lake Tapps, Wash., will be charged in a shooting rampage in two villages near his southern Afghanistan military post in the early hours of March 11. In the assault, nine Afghan children and eight adults were gunned down and some of the victims’ bodies were burned.
The charges are to be read to Bales today at the military prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, where he has been held since being flown from Afghanistan last week. He faces trial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Military authorities had originally said Bales was suspected in the killings of 16 Afghan villagers - nine children and seven adults. They have since changed that to 17, raising the number of adults by one but without explaining how the change came about.
Bales’ civilian attorney, John Henry Browne, did not immediately respond to telephone and e-mail messages seeking comment on the charges.
Bales was on his fourth tour of duty, having served three tours in Iraq, where he suffered a head injury and a foot injury. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, of the 2nd Infantry Division, which is based at Joint Base Lewis-Mc-Chord in Washington.
Browne has portrayed his client as a patriot, loving father and devoted husband who had been traumatized by a comrade’s injury and sent into combat one too many times.
But there have been conflicting reports about what exactly Bales saw relating to the comrade’s injury. A U.S. defense official said that while it is likely that a soldier from Bales’ unit, based in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan, suffered a leg wound a day or two before the March 11 shootings, there is no evidence that Bales witnessed it or the aftermath, or that it played any role in his purported actions.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an internal review.
Afghan officials have asked the United States for some role in the criminal proceedings, perhaps as observers, and to be kept up to date on the case.
Browne has also said that Bales has some memories from before the attacks and some from after but very little of the time when the military says he went on the shooting rampage.
Army officials have said Bales was cleared for return to duty after the head injury he suffered in Iraq.
Bales joined the Army in 2001 after a Florida investment business failed and after he had worked with a string of securities operations. Bales and a broker at one company were hit in 2003 with a $1.5 million arbitration ruling after an elderly couple said that their holdings were decimated.
He also was arrested in2002 for the drunken assault of a casino security guard and had to complete an anger management class.
Information for this article was contributed from Washington by Robert Burns and from Olympia, Wash., by Mike Baker and Manuel Valdes of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 5 on 03/23/2012