US suspect in Afghan massacre held at military base

An American soldier who allegedly shot dead 16 civilians in Afghanistan was being held Saturday in a US military jail in Kansas, awaiting trial as new details of his past emerged.

The suspect, identified Friday as 38-year-old US Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, had served three combat tours in Iraq -- where he was wounded twice -- and was on his first deployment to Afghanistan at the time of the killings.

Whisked out of Afghanistan to Kuwait in the days after the attacks, Bales was transferred to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas on Friday, where US officials said he was being held in "pre-trial confinement."

The US Army said Bales was being kept in "special housing" in his own cell, but no details have been released on a trial or even the charges to be brought against him.

Bales allegedly left his base in the southern province of Kandahar before sunrise on Sunday, entered a nearby Afghan village and opened fire, killing men, women and children. The incident has plunged US-Afghan relations into their deepest crisis since the 2001 US-led invasion.

Several websites containing pictures and stories about Bales, including a 2009 Department of Defense page, were taken down by the time his identity was revealed Friday, but some versions of the webpages could still be accessed, shedding light on his military career.

According to a cached online article, dated February 2009, from the official US Army homepage, Bales participated in one of the bloodiest clashes of the Iraq war -- a January 2007 battle against a messianic Shiite sect in southern Iraq known as the Soldiers of Heaven.

In the 15-hour engagement, according to the US Army article, 250 fighters were killed, all enemy -- and Bales said he was proud his unit "discriminated between the bad guys and the noncombatants and then afterward we ended up helping the people that three or four hours before were trying to kill us.

"I think that's the real difference between being an American as opposed to being a bad guy, someone who puts his family in harm's way like that," Bales said.

Bales's civilian lawyer, John Henry Browne, said this week his client had gotten angry about a serious injury that a comrade sustained the day before the massacre, but held no animosity toward Muslims.

Bales, who joined the army less than two months after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, was also upset because after his extensive Iraq duty he did not believe he would be deployed to Afghanistan, his lawyer said.

A US official told AFP on Friday that "investigators have reason to believe that alcohol may have been a factor in this tragic incident," a violation of US combat rules.

The New York Times quoted one official who said Bales may have "just snapped" due to a combination of stress and tensions with his wife, although Browne has rejected reports of his client's marital problems.

Bales was also angry about being passed over for a military promotion, and as a civilian had brushes with the law, spending time in an anger management course for an assault case that was later dropped, according to reports.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Friday again lashed out at Washington over the massacre, one day after he said international forces should leave villages in his country, potentially jeopardizing NATO operations two years before combat troops are due to leave Afghanistan.

On Saturday Kabul appeared to step back from that demand, saying the call was "nothing new" from Karzai, and part of the Afghan leader's long-held position.

US President Barack Obama agreed to resolve Karzai's concerns over night raids in a phone call Friday, and the two agreed to discuss complaints about NATO troops in villages.

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