Court to sentence Bales for Afghan massacre

The sentencing phase in the murder trial of U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales is set to begin Tuesday, with Bales expected to fight for a chance at parole. Bales, who pleaded guilty in June to killing 16 Afghan villagers in March 2012, was spared the death penalty as part of a plea agreement.

In what appears to be a damaging development against him, Army prosecutors said Monday they have a recording of a phone call in which Bales, a father of two from Washington state, and his wife laugh as they review the charges filed against him.

The mass killing of the villagers — mostly women and children — is the worst case of civilian slaughter blamed on a single, rogue U.S. soldier since the Vietnam War. The incident further strained relations between the United States and Afghanistan after more than a decade of U.S. involvement in the country.

Bales faces life in prison, and the sentencing on Tuesday will determine if he has the possibility of parole. Under the plea agreement, he will be spared the death penalty, and if he is granted the chance of parole, he could be released after 20 years, minus time already served and credit for good behavior, Reuters reported.

Bales' attorneys said they would argue that post-traumatic stress disorder and a brain injury were factors in the killings.

"Our general theme is that Sgt. Bales snapped," said John Henry Browne, one of his civilian attorneys. "That's kind of our mantra, and we say that because of all the things we know — the number of deployments, the head injuries, the PTSD, the drugs, the alcohol."

Bales was on his fourth combat deployment when the killings took place. He had been drinking and watching a movie with other soldiers at Camp Belambay in Kandahar province. Just before dawn Bales slipped away, armed with a 9-mm pistol and an M-4 rifle, and killed 16 civilians in the village of Alkozai, the court was told.

He returned to base and woke another soldier and told him what happened. But the soldier didn't believe Bales and went back to sleep. Bales left again to attack a second village, Najiban.

The massacre sparked angry protests in Afghanistan, causing the U.S. to temporarily halt combat operations in the country. Meanwhile, it took three weeks before Army investigators could reach the crime scene.

Prosecutors hope to show that Bales had a pattern of bad behavior that predated his multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, pointing to the phone call between him and his wife.

"It certainly goes to evidence in aggravation, the attitude of lack of remorse," Lt. Col. Rob Stelle told the judge.

Bales' lawyers argued that playing just snippets of the conversation would put them out of context. As a result, Nance ruled that the entire phone call, over two hours, would be played for the jury.

The defense also challenged the prosecution's calling as an expert witness an Afghan man who has interviewed survivors of the shooting and family members of victims. The victims "are capable of speaking for themselves," said Emma Scanlan, another of Bales' civilian attorneys.

Nance said he would permit the expert to testify in general terms about how traumatic events and their aftermath are dealt with in Pashtun culture but would allow "no speculation about the specific impact on these specific victims."

Some survivors are scheduled to speak during the proceedings this week.

Several villagers testified by video link from Afghanistan during a hearing last year, including a young girl in a bright headscarf who described hiding behind her father as he was shot to death. Boys told of begging the soldier to spare them, yelling, "We are children! We are children!" A thick-bearded man told of being shot in the neck by a gunman from an arm's length away.

The villagers, some of whom have expressed outrage that Bales is going to escape the death penalty, have not encountered him in person since the attack, nor have they heard him apologize. Bales, who told a judge at his plea hearing that he couldn't explain why he committed the killings, did not say then that he was sorry, but his lawyers hinted that an apology might be forthcoming at his sentencing.

At one point during his plea hearing, the judge asked Bales why he killed the villagers.

Bales responded, "Sir, as far as why — I've asked that question a million times since then. There's not a good reason in this world for why I did the horrible things I did."

Al Jazeera and wire services