US soldier calm as Afghans camp over killings

The US soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan villagers seemed surprised but calm when detained after the alleged massacre, as angry Afghans protested, witnesses said Tuesday. The second day of a pre-trial hearing of Staff Sergeant Robert Bales heard how angry locals mounted a near-riot outside the US army base in the hours after the killings in March in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar province. Bales, 39, mostly appeared passive during the six to eight hours he was held before being helicoptered out of the base, although he did break his own laptop as his personal belongings were gathered together. "You gotta be kidding me," Bales said on returning to the base in the early hours of March 11 to find colleagues waiting to detain him, according to veteran officer Lance Allard, testifying at the military court hearing. Allard said he thought Bales was an effective sergeant before the incident, and voiced his "utter amazement" when he met Bales at the camp gate in the early hours, to escort him back inside. Bales "seemed pretty resigned, pretty quiet," after he was met by Allard and two other armed soldiers, adding that Bales obeyed instructions and was not aggressive when he returned to the base. When Bales was asked what he'd been doing, Allard reported that he replied, "I'm not going to answer that -- because I love you guys." Allard described a frenzied scene of between 2,000 and 3,000 Afghan citizens crowding the gates of the base after the full scale of the carnage came to light. He credited the Afghan National Army (AFA) with defending the camp. The next witness, Sergeant Derek King, who helped guard Bales until his departure later that day, said he was mostly quiet, but at one point volunteered: "I love you guys, please don't think less of me." "Do your remember that motherfucker with the PKM? You don't need to worry about that guy anymore," he added, referring to a Russian-made machine gun. Sergeant Ross O'Rourke, who also guarded Bales, told how he broke his own laptop. Bales said he did not want to take it with him, so a guard laid it on a bed. At that point Bales suddenly reached over and grabbed it, cracking the screen back on itself, he said, adding that he did not feel threatened by the act. A military medic, James Stillwell, examined Bales for injuries and found none. When he asked the sergeant where all the blood on his uniform had come from, Bales simply shrugged his shoulders. Stillwell, who described Bales as "coherent," reported how the 39-year-old felt when, while out of the camp, flares were fired to illuminate the area, as his colleagues tried to find where he was. "Once I saw the lume (illumination) rounds, I knew I was fucked," he reported Bales as saying. Bales faces 16 counts of murder, six of attempted murder, seven of assault, two of using drugs and one of drinking alcohol. Seventeen of the 22 victims were women or children and almost all were shot in the head. On Monday prosecutors set out their case, saying Bales had been drinking whisky with colleagues before the massacre and watching the movie "Man on Fire," starring Denzel Washington as an ex-assassin on a revenge mission. His wife and lawyer have claimed that Bales, also a veteran of the Iraq war, could not remember what he did on the night in question in Afghanistan. But prosecutors refuted that claim Monday, at the start of the two-week Article 32 hearing to determine if he should face a full court martial over the killings. Witnesses and relatives of victims are expected to testify via videolink from Afghanistan next week, when the US-based hearings will be held in the evening, to allow Afghan testimony during daylight hours. Should the Article 32 hearing result in a court-martial and Bales be found guilty, he could face the death penalty.