U.S. soldier Jeremy Morlock was sentenced to 24 years in prison on Wednesday for the murder of Afghan civilians, after admitting he purposefully killed three innocent people while on tour in 2010.
The 22-year-old was accused of being part of a "kill team" that took pleasure in torturing and murdering unarmed Afghans.
"The plan was to kill people," he told a military judge, when asked what his intentions were when he fired his weapon.
"Did everybody know, 'We're killing people who are completely innocent'?" the judge asked, according to The Associated Press.
Despite his guilty plea, Morlock maintained that fellow soldier Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs was the leader of the attacks, which have implicated a dozen members in the soldiers' Stryker Brigade. Gibbs, who has also been charged, has claimed the killings were justified.
The case made headlines this week when German news outlet Der Spiegel published graphic photos of Morlock and PFC Andrew Holmes, also in his unit, posing with the corpses. In one photo, Morlock is seen lifting up a body by the hair.
Morlock, a Wasilla, Alaska native, will be dishonorably discharged from the Army, and eligible for parole in seven years, Reuters reported.
During the hearing, he read a statement apologizing to the families of his victims and the "people of Afghanistan," saying, "I lost my moral compass."
"He's really a good kid. This is just a bad war at a bad time in our country's history," his lawyer Geoffrey Nathan said Tuesday. "There was a lack of supervision, a lack of command control, the environment was terrible. In his mind, he had no choice."
