U.S. military sources tell Fox News the American soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians last weekend is Staff Sgt. Robert Bales.
He arrived at the maximum-security military prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas Friday, Fox News confirms.
Military officials have declined to identify the suspect publicly, insisting that it is usual procedure to keep a suspect’s identity secret until he is officially charged. They have maintained that stance even after a hearing for the detained soldier Tuesday found probable cause to continue holding him, and he was sent from Afghanistan to a detention facility in Kuwait.
he soldier was being flown Friday to the U.S. military’s only maximum-security prison, at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, sources said. The move to the U.S. does not necessarily mean an announcement of formal criminal charges is imminent, a defense official told The Associated Press.Bales is a 38-year-old staff sergeant, husband, father of two young children and a veteran who was in the midst of his fourth tour in a war zone.
John Henry Browne, a defense attorney from Seattle, confirmed his client’s identity.
Bales was featured in a brief article in a September 2011 military newsletter detailing a training exercise at Fort Irwin meant to simulate efforts to establish relationships with Afghan village residents.
“How’s the security affecting your family?” the article quotes Bales asking a village elder. The elder replies it’s “much better than yesterday.”
Another article, from 2009, quotes Bales describing a particularly intense firefight in Iraq: “It was like a match lit up,” Bales said. “It looked like a toy with a candle lit.”
Browne said the sergeant is originally from the Midwest but now lives near Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state. His children are 3 and 4.
The sergeant’s family says they saw no signs of aggression or anger. “They were totally shocked” by accounts of the massacre, Browne said. “He’s never said anything antagonistic about Muslims. He’s in general very mild-mannered.”
Browne, who said he has met with the family and talked with the suspect, cited a need to protect family members in declining to release the soldier’s name.
Reporters swarmed Bales’ neighborhood in Lake Tapps, in Washington state on Friday night in the rural community, a wooded area filled with pine trees about 20 miles northeast of the base.
Kassie Holland, who lives next door, said she would often see Bales playing with his two kids and the family together at the modern split-level home.
“My reaction is that I’m shocked,” she said. “I can’t believe it was him. There were no signs. It’s really sad. I don’t want to believe that he did it.”
“He always had a good attitude about being in the service. He was never really angry about it. When I heard him talk, he said, it seemed like, yeah, that’s my job. That’s what I do. He never expressed a lot of emotion toward it.”
The soldier, said to have received sniper training, is assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, of the 2nd Infantry Division, which is based at Lewis-McChord and has been dispatched to Iraq three times since 2003, military officials say.
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