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The lawyer for a US Army sergeant suspected in the slaughter of 16 Afghan villagers is flying to Kansas to meet with his client as formal charges against the 10-year veteran loom within days.
John Henry Browne of Seattle said he plans to meet on Monday with Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, who is being held in an isolated cell at the maximum security military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Charges against Bales, 38, are expected to be filed within a week and if the case goes to court the trial will be held in the United States, said a legal expert with the US military familiar with the investigation.
That expert said charges were still being decided and that the location for any trial had not yet been determined. If the suspect is brought to trial, it is possible that Afghan witnesses and victims would be flown to the United States to participate, he said.
Military lawyers say once lawyers involved in the initial investigation of an alleged crime involving a service member have what they believe to be a solid understanding of what happened and are satisfied with the evidence collected, they draft charges and present them to a commander. That person then makes a judgment on whether there is probable cause to believe that an offence was committed and that the accused committed it.
That commander then 'prefers' the charges to a convening authority, who typically is the commander of the brigade to which the accused is assigned but could be of higher rank.
Records and interviews have revealed Bales as a man appreciated by friends and family who won military commendations. Yet he also faced professional disappointment, financial trouble and brushes with the law.
According to details from interviews, Bales was bypassed for promotion, struggled to pay for his house and eyed a way out of his job at a Washington state military base months before he was accused of the killings in two Afghanistan villages.
While Bales sat in an isolated cell, classmates and neighbours from a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio remembered him as a 'happy-go-lucky' high school football player who took care of a special needs child and watched out for troublemakers in the neighbourhood.
But court records and interviews show that the 10-year veteran - with a string of commendations for good conduct after four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan - had joined the army after a Florida investment job went sour, had a Seattle-area home condemned, struggled to make payments on another and failed to get a promotion or a transfer a year ago.
His legal troubles included charges that he assaulted a girlfriend and, in a hit-and run accident, ran bleeding in military clothes into the woods, court records show. He told police he fell asleep at the wheel and paid a fine to get the charges dismissed, the records show.
Military officials say that after drinking on a southern Afghanistan base, Bales crept away on March 11 to two sleeping villages, shooting his victims and setting many of them on fire. Nine of the 16 killed were children and 11 belonged to one family.
'This is some crazy stuff if it's true,' Steve Berling, a high school classmate, said of the revelations about the father of two known as 'Bobby' in his hometown of Norwood, Ohio.
His former platoon leader said Bales was a model soldier inspired by the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to serve, who saved lives in firefights on his second of three Iraq deployments.
'He's one of the best guys I ever worked with,' said Army Captain Chris Alexander, who led Bales on a 15-month deployment in Iraq.
'He is not some psychopath. He's an outstanding soldier who has given a lot for this country.'
But pressing family troubles were hinted at by his wife, Kari, on multiple blogs posted with names like The Bales Family Adventures and BabyBales. A year ago, she wrote that Bales was hoping for a promotion or a transfer after nine years stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord outside Tacoma, Washington.
'We are hoping to have as much control as possible' over the future, Kari Bales wrote last March 25. 'Who knows where we will end up. I just hope that we are able to rent our house so that we can keep it. I think we are both still in shock.'
After Bales lost out on a promotion to E7 - a sergeant first-class - the family hoped to go to either Germany, Italy or Hawaii for an 'adventure', she said. Instead the army redeployed his unit - the 2nd Infantry Division of the 3rd Stryker Brigade, named after armoured Stryker vehicles - to Afghanistan.
It would be Bales' fourth tour in a war zone. He joined the military two months after the September 11 attacks and spent more than three years in Iraq during three separate assignments since 2003. His lawyer said he was injured twice in Iraq - once losing part of his foot - but his 20 or so commendations do not include the Purple Heart, given to soldiers wounded in combat.
Alexander said Bales wasn't injured while he oversaw him during their deployment - Bales' second in Iraq. He called Bales a 'very solid' non-commissioned officer who didn't have more difficulty than his fellow soldiers with battlefield stress. Bales shot at a man aiming a rocket-propelled grenade at his platoon's vehicle in Mosul, Iraq, sending the grenade flying over the vehicle.
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