US to let GI avoid death in plea deal

A US Army sergeant charged with the massacre of 16 Afghan civilians while in Afghanistan as part of the US-led occupation force intends to plead guilty to the war crime in a bid to avoid execution.

In a plea bargain with military prosecutors, Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, 39, reportedly plans to enter a guilty plea for gunning down or stabbing to death mostly children in two Afghan village while there were asleep to avert a death sentence at a hearing next week, US-based media outlets reported Thursday citing his attorney.

According to the reports, Bales’ lawyer John Henry Browne asserted on Wednesday that he had reached a deal with military prosecutors not to seek a death penalty for his client in exchange for his guilty plea.

Although the lawyers for the American soldier have not openly argued that he did not commit the massacre, they have, instead, claimed that he may have carried out the brutal killings while under the influence of alcohol, medications or steroids.

The lawyers have reportedly also used the popular argument that Bales might have had Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder at the time of carrying out the massacre.

Bales has been charged with walking off a US outpost in the Panjwai district of Kandahar Province in early morning to March 11, 2012, and shooting or stabbing to death 16 Afghan civilians in two villages.

While the US Army insists that Bales acted alone, an Afghan fact-finding mission has found that the American soldier was not the only perpetrator of the crime and that up to 20 US soldiers collaborated in the carnage.

There have been many reports of American soldiers engaging in killing, torturing, falsely arresting and even dismembering body parts of their victims while deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of the US-led wars in the two Muslim countries.

Despite the very brutal nature of most of the crimes committed by US troops in the two war-ravaged countries, all the perpetrators have either been acquitted of their crimes or received very light sentences.