Ammon News - WASHINGTON, DC (The Guardian) - A US army sergeant who killed 16 Afghan civilians in cold blood last year has pleaded guilty to premeditated murder and other charges under a deal with military prosecutors that spares him from the death penalty.

Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, a decorated veteran of four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, admitted to leaving his post in the Afghan province of Kandahar last March to gun down and set fire to unarmed villagers, mostly women and children, in attacks on their family compounds.

"As far as why, I've asked that question a million times since then," Bales said, in a calm, steady voice, when the judge pressed him for an explanation. "There is not a good reason in this world for why I did the horrible things that I did."

It was the worst case of civilian slaughter blamed on a single US soldier since the Vietnam war.

Bales, 39, faces a life term in prison, but a military jury will decide if and when he will ever be eligible for parole after further proceedings set to begin on 19 August.

Prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty in return for Bales pleading guilty to the murder charges.

The judge, Colonel Jeffery Nance, accepted the agreement at the end of a lengthy hearing during which Bales was required to recount the events and to convince the judge he understood his plea and the consequences of his acts.

Wearing a military dress uniform, Bales stood beside his lawyer, Emma Scanlan, as she entered guilty pleas on his behalf to 16 counts of premeditated murder, six counts of attempted murder and seven counts of assault, as well as to alcohol and drug charges.

Reading through the list of charges himself, one at a time, later in the hearing, Bales acknowledged that he killed 10 people by shooting and burning them, and six by gunshot only.

"I then did kill her by shooting her with a firearm and burning her. This act was without legal justification," he said during a matter-of-fact recitation of his crimes, delivered with no visible sign of emotion.

Asked by Nance if he had acted out of self-defence, or under orders, or whether he had any other legal justification to kill the 16 villagers, Bales replied, "No, sir."

"Could you have avoided killing them if you wanted to?" the judge asked.

"Yes, sir," he answered. He said he "formed the intent [to kill] as I raised my weapon".

Bales said setting fire to his victims was also done with the intent to kill, and that he was aware it was "against their cultural norms".

Bales has claimed his memories of the killings are spotty, but he acknowledged seeing a lantern at one point during the rampage and that matches were later found in his possession. He said he learned from previous testimony that kerosene was used in the burnings.

Bales's wife was seated behind him in the courtroom benches at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, near Tacoma, Washington.

Army prosecutors have said Bales acted alone and with chilling premeditation when, armed with a pistol, a rifle and a grenade launcher, he left his post twice during the night to attack civilians. He is said to have returned to base in the middle of the rampage to tell a fellow soldier: "I just shot up some people."

The defence argued that Bales, a father of two, was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and a brain injury even before his deployment to Afghanistan.

Under questioning from Nance, Bales said his use of illegal steroids, which he admitted taking to improve muscle tone and recovery time from missions, also "increased my irritability and anger".

During a nine-day pre-trial hearing in the autumn, witnesses testified that Bales had been upset by a bomb blast near his outpost that severed a fellow soldier's leg days before the shootings.

One corporal recounted that in the hours before the rampage he, Bales and a third soldier had been drinking whisky while watching the film Man on fire, which stars Denzel Washington as a former assassin bent on revenge.

Night-vision video footage taken from a surveillance balloon over the camp captured Bales's arrest, showing him walking back to the post with a bed sheet or rug tied around his neck like a cloak. He was confronted by three soldiers who ordered him to his weapons and then took him into custody.

One of them, Corporal David Godwin, testified that Bales kept repeating the words, "I thought I was doing the right thing," and, "It's bad. It's bad. It's really bad."

After Wednesday's hearing, Scanlan told reporters her client "has been waiting for the day that he can accept responsibility for what he's done".

She said Bales wanted to make a statement of apology but that Wednesday's hearing was not the appropriate place or time.

"The forum for that is the penalty phase," she said.

Army officials said some family members of the victims were expected to give statements at the sentencing hearing in August.