A US soldier who killed 16 Afghan civilians last year was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in Washington.
Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales appeared in blue military dress. He showed no emotion as the jury announced its verdict Friday. He was led away from the court without a chance to hug his weeping mother, Xinhua reported. The 40-year-old soldier’s lawyers argued that he should one day be eligible for parole, while prosecutors who described him as a “man of no moral compass” pointed to the heinous nature of the crimes in arguing to keep him in jail for life. On March 11, 2012, Bales slipped away from his military base before dawn and killed 16 unarmed Afghan civilians, mostly women and children, in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan.