JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. — A soldier accused of killing Afghan civilians for sport was sentenced Wednesday to 24 years in prison after he pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against other defendants in the case.  Specialist Jeremy N. Morlock, one of five soldiers from an Army Stryker brigade based here who are accused of staging combat situations to kill three civilians in Afghanistan last year, told the military judge presiding over the case, Lt. Col. Kwasi L. Hawks, that the deaths were neither justified nor accidental.  “The plan was to kill people, sir,” Specialist Morlock told the judge at the start of a court-martial.  The sentence, plea and agreement to testify followed a deal Specialist Morlock and his lawyers negotiated with prosecutors in January. The military sentencing guidelines for the charges to which he pleaded guilty — including three counts of premeditated murder, conspiracy to commit murder and assault — recommend life in prison, with or without the possibility of parole. His lawyers say he could be eligible for parole in about seven years.  Specialist Morlock, 22, of Wasilla, Alaska, is the first of the five to face a court-martial.  Few new details emerged in the proceeding. Specialist Morlock had already given several interviews to investigators in which he described how members of his unit used grenades and rifles to fake combat situations so they could kill civilians who he said posed no threat.  As part of his plea on Wednesday, Specialist Morlock reasserted claims he had made earlier that another of the accused, a superior, Staff Sgt. Calvin R. Gibbs, was the ringleader in the killings. A lawyer for Sergeant Gibbs has said all the killings were in justified combat situations.  The two rows of public seating in the small military courtroom were filled with family and friends of Specialist Morlock’s. The hearing included testimony from several of his supporters, including his high school hockey coach, who recalled Specialist Morlock leading his team to the state championship while serving as its captain his senior year.  Specialist Morlock also spoke. He apologized to families of the victims, to “the people of Afghanistan themselves” and to fellow soldiers. He and others referred to his close relationship to his father, a former Army paratrooper who died in a boating accident in Alaska in 2007.  “I violated not only the law but the Army core values, and I also violated the principles my father instilled in me,” he said, adding that he had “lost my moral compass.”  A lawyer for Specialist Morlock called to the witness stand a sociologist who had reviewed an internal investigation of the Stryker brigade and its former commander, Col. Harry D. Tunnell. The sociologist, Stjepan Mestrovic, said the documents portrayed a “dysfunctional” brigade and command structure that “created an environment that led to these crimes.”  Colonel Tunnell was removed from his position last summer, after the investigation into the killings was under way. He could not be reached late Wednesday; he has refused to respond to questions about the brigade in the past. Neither he nor other officers in the brigade have been charged in the killings.  Some soldiers in the case are accused of posing with dead Afghans in photographs and then sharing the pictures with others. The Army, worried the pictures could complicate its efforts in Afghanistan, has put tight restrictions on the images. But this week, the German magazine Der Spiegel published three photographs, including one that appears to show Specialist Morlock smiling as he holds a dead man up by the hair on his head.  Referring to other soldiers in combat zones, Frank Spinner, a lawyer for Specialist Morlock, told reporters, “To the extent his actions have placed their lives in jeopardy, he can only express regret.”
A 22-year-old specialist is one of five soldiers accused of killing Afghans for sport in Kandahar last year.