Kansas, USA – The US soldier accused of massacring of 16 Afghans “doesn’t remember everything” about the incident, his lawyer has said after meeting with his client in a military detention center here in America. ”He has some memory of some things that happened that night. He has some memories of before the incident and he has some memories of after the incident. In between, very little,” attorney John Henry Browne told reporters Monday evening, after meeting with US Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales.

Distribution System (DVIDS) shows Staff Sgt. Robert Bales (L) at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, California, the US soldier who allegedly shot and killed 16 civilians in Afghanistan who was identified March 16, 2012. | Photo: US Defense

“That doesn’t mean he has amnesia. There are a lot of other options,” the counsel said. Browne met Bales at the center at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas where the accused soldier has been in solitary confinement since arriving on Friday. Bales, 38, is suspected of walking out of his base in Afghanistan March 11 and gunning down 16 civilians, including nine children and three women. The massacre has severely damaged the US-Afghan ties.

The lawyer said Bales remembered some details from before and after the massacre, but almost nothing of the time the military believes he went on a shooting spree through two Afghan villages. Bales has not yet been charged, but an official from his home base near Tacoma, Washington, said that charges would likely be filed by the end of this week.

Browne said his client was in a state of mind that is “confused”. “He was very good about putting me in his shoes, put it that way. We all know what is going on over there (in Afghanistan), but you don’t really know until you look at somebody like that.”