Staff Sgt Robert Bales became emotional during testimony in which he said he was angry and afraid when he went on a solo nighttime mission and slaughtered villagers, mostly women and children, on March 11, 2012 in their huts. The massacre prompted such angry protests that the US temporarily halted combat operations, and it was three weeks before Army investigators could reach the crime scene.
Bales did not recount specifics but described the attack as "an act of cowardice, behind a mask of fear, bullshit and bravado."
Bales, 39, pleaded guilty in June in a deal to avoid the death penalty for the attacks. A military jury will determine if his life sentence should offer a chance of parole.
If he is sentenced to life with the possibility of parole, Bales would be eligible in 20 years, but there's no guarantee he would receive it. He will receive life with parole unless at least five of the six jurors say otherwise.
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He was nervous when he took the stand as the final witness in the hearing at which his lawyers have tried paint a sympathetic picture of the soldier to contrast his own admissions and the testimony of angry Afghan villagers about the horror he wrought.
The defense followed two days of testimony from nine Afghans, who spoke of their lives since the attacks.
Haji Mohammad Wazir, lost 11 family members, including his mother, wife and six of his seven children, told the six-member jury yesterday that the attacks destroyed what had been a happy life. He was in another village with his youngest son, now 5-year-old Habib Shah, during the attack.