In her first public statement, the wife of the U.S. soldier accused of slaughtering 16 Afghan civilians said Monday her family is “profoundly sad” as they try to “make sense of something that makes no sense at all.”
“What has been reported is completely out of character of the man I know and admire,” Karilyn Bales told ABC News in a written statement issued hours after Staff Sgt. Robert Bales met with his high-powered lawyer at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.
“Please respect me when I say I cannot shed any light on what happened that night, so please do not ask. I too want to know what happened. I want to know how this could be.”
Pentagon officials say Bales, 38, a veteran of three tours of duty in Iraq, had been drinking on a military base in southern Afghanistan before he allegedly went on a house-to-house killing spree, setting many of the victims on fire. Nine of the dead were children.
“What happened on the night of March 11 in Kandahar Province was a terrible and heartbreaking tragedy,” Karilyn Bales said, noting that she and all members of her and her husband’s extended families “are all profoundly sad.”
“We extend our condolences to all the people of the Panjawai District, our hearts go out to all of them, especially to the parents, brothers, sisters and grandparents of the children who perished.”
Sgt. Bales has not yet been formally charged in the massacre, which has badly strained U.S. relations with Afghanistan and thrown a wrench into the Pentagon’s drawdown policy to end the decade-old war.
He is in what the military calls “pre-trial confinement,” and is being housed in the same wing as two other notorious soldiers awaiting trial — accused WikiLeaks leaker Pfc. Bradley Manning and Sgt. John Russell, who is charged with killing five servicemembers at a combat stress clinic in Baghdad.
Bales’ wife and two children are now living at an Army base for their protection, and on Monday moving vans arrived at his family’s home in Lake Tapps, Wash.
“I have no indication that my family’s own safety is at risk, but I appreciate the efforts that have been undertaken to protect us,” Karilyn Bales said in her statement, pleading for peace.
“I hope there will soon be no reason for protection of families, whether here or in Kandahar Province, or anywhere, because the pain inflicted in war should never be an excuse to inflict yet more pain.
“The cycle must be broken. We must find peace.”
She also made a plaintive request for an end to the relentless pressure her family has faced from the international media.
“Please allow us some peace and time as we try to make sense of something that makes no sense at all,” she said.
“The victims and their families are all in my prayers, as is my husband, who I love very much.”
Sgt. Bales’ lawyer, John Henry Browne, provided a sense of enormity of the “trauma” that Karilyn Bales mentioned in her statement when he emerged shaken from a three-hour meeting with the accused.
“Probably the most emotional day I’ve ever had as a human being,” Browne said. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”
Browne did not say what they discussed, only that it was “an extremely traumatic morning.”
“It was almost unbelievable,” he said of the experience.
2 weeks ago
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