The wife of a U.S. service member accused of massacring 17 Afghans in the dark of night has come to his defense.
“It’s not him,” Karilyn Bales told Matt Lauer on the Today Show.
Her husband, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, is accused of leaving his Afghan army base and murdering 17 Afghan civilians, including nine children.
Karilyn Bales said her husband was a “big kid himself,” and the thought of him killing children was “unbelievable” to her.
Sgt. Bales is currently being held for 17 counts of premeditated murder in a Kansas military prison. His alleged actions have further stoked high tensions between the United States and Afghanistan, where a growing number of people are calling for a full U.S. troop withdrawal. Investigators now believe Sgt. Bales committed the murders in two separate episodes during the same night in March.
Karilyn Bales says that her husband displayed no telltale signs of PTSD, and that she doesn’t think anything will change her belief of his innocence.
