Robert Bales has pleaded guilty to killing 16 civilians in Afghanistan. Photograph: US Department of Defense/AP  A military jury has sentenced a US soldier who massacred 16 Afghan civilians last year to life in prison without a chance of parole. The decision came on Friday in the case against Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, who pleaded guilty in June in a deal to avoid the death penalty for one of the worst atrocities of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.  Bales took the witness stand on Thursday and apologized for the pre-dawn attack in March 2012, describing it as an act of cowardice. The father of two from Lake Tapps, Washington was serving his fourth combat deployment when he left his outpost at Camp Belambay, in Kandahar province, in the middle of the night to attack two villages.  Closing arguments ended on Friday, leaving jurors to consider whether the 40-year-old's life sentence should include the possibility of parole. Prosecutor Jay Morse said Bales should not get parole. He showed photos of a young girl who was killed as she screamed and cried, and showed surveillance video of Bales returning to his base with "the methodical, confident gait of a man who's accomplished his mission".  Defense attorney Emma Scanlan said no one could minimize the atrocities Bales committed, but urged jurors to consider his earlier military service and leave him with a "sliver of light" a sentence of life with the possibility of parole after 20 years. She read from letters sent by Bales' fellow soldiers, one who said that a decade of seeing his fellow soldiers killed and maimed left Bales in a darkness that "swallowed him whole".  On Thursday, Bales said he'd bring back the victims "in a heartbeat" if he could. Several survivors and family members of the victims who were flown to the US testified this week, and one cursed Bales for attacking villagers as some slept and others screamed for mercy.  "If someone loses one child, you can imagine how devastated their life would be," said Haji Mohammad Wazir, who lost 11 family members, including his mother, wife and six of his seven children.  Bales was not able to explain to a judge why he did what he did. His attorneys suggested that post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury may have played a role in the killings. But they offered no testimony from psychiatrists or other doctors.  Bales' lawyers did their best to paint a sympathetic picture, and Bales described the trouble he had readjusting to civilian life after his deployments to Iraq. He became angry all the time, he said. He began drinking heavily. He began to see a counselor but quit because he didn't think it was working and he didn't want others to find him weak. His rage worsened as he deployed to Afghanistan in late 2011.
Prosecution and defence contested issue of parole for US staff sergeant who killed 16 Afghan villagers in attack last year