'No evidence' in Afghan massacre

20 March 2012 Last updated at 23:40 GMT  A photo showing Sgt Robert Bales (left) has been removed from a military website The lawyer representing a US soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians in their homes has said there is little proof of his client's guilt.

John Henry Browne said there was "no forensic evidence" against Staff Sgt Robert Bales and "no confession".

He also dismissed reports suggesting Sgt Bales, 38, was having financial troubles as irrelevant to the case.

Sgt Bales is being held a military detention centre awaiting charges, which are expected this week.

The killings have undermined US relations with Kabul and led to calls for Nato to speed up their planned withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

After meeting with Sgt Bales at a US army base in Kansas, Mr Browne told reporters: "We've all heard the allegations. I don't know that the government has proved much."

Sgt Bales is the only known suspect in the killings - despite repeated Afghan assertions that more than one American was involved.

Mr Browne said he now plans to travel to Afghanistan to gather his own evidence.

Money troubles

The lawyer also responded to questions about Sgt Bales' financial history.

He and his wife had reportedly struggled to make the payments on two properties they had bought.

It has now also emerged that - along with another man and his company - Sgt Bales owed a reported $1.5m (£950,000) from an arbitration ruling nearly a decade ago which found him guilty of securities fraud while he was working as a stockbroker.

Mr Browne told Associated Press "that doesn't mean anything".

Sgt Bales and his wife were reportedly having trouble making their mortgage payments

"Sure, there are financial problems. I have financial problems. Ninety-nine percent of America has financial problems," he said.

"You don't go kill women and children because you have financial problems."

His wife, Karilyn, has issued a statement expressing her condolences to the victims and their families and saying what reportedly took place is "completely out of character of the man I know and admire".

Mr Browne first met his client at Fort Leavenworth on Monday to begin preparing his defence.

The Pentagon has previously said that Sgt Bales could face charges that carry a possible death penalty.

Such a trial could take years, contrasting with Afghan demands for swift and decisive justice.

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Forensic experts attack Amanda Knox trial evidence

PERUGIA, Italy — Independent forensic experts took the stand on Monday to attack key pieces of evidence used to convict U.S. student Amanda Knox of the murder of her British roommate in the Italian city of Perugia in 2007.

The two court-appointed experts, Carla Vecchiotti and Stefano Conti, told an appeal hearing that the knife thought to have been used to kill 21 year-old Meredith Kercher carried no trace of blood but may have been contaminated with other DNA traces.

Presenting the findings from a report released last month, they said police had used the same gloves to take different pieces of evidence during their initial examination of the house the two women shared in the university town of Perugia.

Kercher was found half naked in Nov. 2007 lying in a pool of blood with her throat cut.

Knox, 24, her former Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito and Ivoirian Rudy Guede were convicted and jailed in 2009 for the murder after what judges concluded was a frenzied sex game that spiraled out of control.

Both Knox and Sollecito, who have appealed against the original ruling were in court on Monday as was Knox's mother, Edda Mellas.

"You know, it was an excellent day, to be able to see everything, step by step exactly what our experts said, you know, and now confirmed by independent experts is very powerful," Mellas told Reuters Television after the hearing.

The report by Vecchiotti and Conti confirmed police conclusions that Knox's DNA was found on the handle of a knife they identified as the murder weapon but said that the material found on the blade was starch, rather than blood.

"There are no scientific elements which would confirm the presence of blood traces on the knife. The protocols for minimizing the risk of contamination were not respected," their testimony said.

They also said there was no DNA evidence on a clip from Kercher's bra which police said was traceable to Sollecito.

The two independent experts had been commissioned by the appeal court to go over the forensic evidence in the case which has attracted huge media interest and severe criticism of police methods from the defense team.

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They made a scathing attack on the original investigation, saying that proper decontamination procedures had not been followed, there was insufficient documentation of the amount of DNA evidence collected and inadequate "real time" analysis.

The next hearing is scheduled for July 30 when the experts face cross-examination by prosecutor and the defense team.

Francesco Maresca, a lawyer for the Kercher family, said the evidence provided by Vecchiotti and Conti was not conclusive.

"I hope, I am certain and trust that on Saturday we will be able to clarify in court the fact that they did not follow the original investigation and therefore did not follow the profound exchange of dialogue between various consultants and once again we will remind of the principal factors in this case," he said.

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

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