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WASHINGTON -- Nasir Ahmad Ahmadi was hired to work as an interpreter alongside American troops in Afghanistan. But soldiers were alarmed by his strange behavior, his inability to do the job and the foul condition of his living quarters, and they suspected he used drugs.
Just a few months after he arrived at an Army Special Forces base near Kabul, Ahmadi was ordered to pack his bags and leave. Instead of getting ready for the next flight out, Ahmadi grabbed an AK-47 assault rifle from another interpreter's room on the base and started shooting. He killed two unarmed soldiers and wounded a third.
On Monday, nearly 18 months after the January 2010 shootings, the survivor and family members of the slain soldiers filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Mission Essential Personnel, the U.S. defense contractor that hired Ahmadi as it rushed to put more interpreters to work in Afghanistan.
During the rampage at Firebase Nunez, Ahmadi killed Specialist Marc Decoteau, a 19-year-old just a few weeks into his first tour of duty, and Capt. David Johnpaul Thompson, a veteran soldier and the father of two young girls. At close range, Ahmadi shot Chief Warrant Officer Thomas Russell, hitting him in the legs. Russell survived.
An alert Army sergeant ended the rampage when he drew his pistol and killed Ahmadi, a 23-year-old native of Afghanistan who had immigrated to the United States in 2009.
In their lawsuit, filed in federal court in North Carolina, Russell and the families of Decoteau and Thompson accuse Mission Essential Personnel of negligence and breach of contract for failing to look into Ahmadi's background and not properly testing him to ensure he was psychologically sound before giving him a job.
Mission Essential Personnel, based in Columbus, Ohio, and better known as MEP, was founded in 2004 and is the U.S. government's primary supplier of linguists, with more than 8,200 personnel in Afghanistan and a dozen other countries, according to the company's website. The company had $629 million in revenue last year, up from $6.7 million in 2005.
In a statement Monday, MEP called the incident at Nunez shocking and tragic and said Ahmadi's actions were "entirely unforeseeable."
Ahmadi "was thoroughly vetted for his deployment, including medical, psychological and counter-intelligence screening, and was approved by the U.S. government to deploy to Afghanistan," the statement said. Ahmadi "exhibited no signs of mental distress nor were there any other indications he might commit this criminal act," it added. The company also said the interpreter was under the operational control of the soldiers at Nunez and no one at the base ever raised any concerns to company managers about his performance or conduct.
The company said the military has consistently rated MEP's performance as outstanding. "The big picture is clear: MEP is a good company that has grown because of its good work and commitment to supporting the troops."
MEP's interpreters in Afghanistan were not authorized to carry weapons, the military said. Another MEP interpreter at Nunez had an AK-47 in his living quarters, violating the requirements of the contract, the lawsuit said.
"Knowing that an employee of Mission Essential Personnel, who was mismanaged, came up behind Marc in a dark hallway and shot him to death, took you back to square one in your sense of loss," said Nancy Decoteau, Marc Decoteau's mother, as she recalled reading the Army's investigation of the shootings completed several months after her son died. "That was not how Marc wanted to give his life."
The families said MEP's reaction to the shootings compounded their grief. No condolence letters. No one from the company attended either funeral. No apologies. "I would have been so much more receptive to them showing up at the funeral to say, `I'm sorry this happened,'" said Emily Thompson, Johnpaul Thompson's widow.
