U.S. civilian shot in Kuwait says ordeal shows need for anti-terror drive
LANDSTUHL, Germany (AP) – An American who was shot in Kuwait said Tuesday he was told by Kuwaiti police that the gunman had trained in Afghanistan. David Caraway, 37, was seriously wounded when he and another civilian employee of the U.S. military, Michael Rene Pouliot, were ambushed Jan. 21 on a road leading to Camp Doha, where thousands of U.S. soldiers are based. Pouliot, 46, was killed.
“They said they caught the guy and he had been trained in Afghanistan,” Caraway told reporters at Landstuhl Medical Center, where he is recovering from multiple wounds. He didn’t elaborate.
A previously unknown group calling itself the Dawa and Jihad Group claimed responsibility for the attack, a London-based Arabic newspaper said Tuesday.
In a statement e-mailed to the Dubai correspondent of Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, the group said it carried out the attack to protest “American colonialism” and “the use of our lands to strike at Muslims in Iraq and before that in Afghanistan.”
The group “operates under the banner of Osama bin Laden,” Abu Osama al-Kuwaiti, who claimed to be a leader of the group, told Asharq Al-Awsat’s correspondent in an Internet interview Tuesday.
There was no way to verify the claim or the authenticity of the group.
A 25-year-old Kuwaiti identified as Sami al-Mutairi was arrested in Saudi Arabia after the ambush and deported to Kuwait, where officials said he confessed to the shooting.
A Western diplomatic source said Sunday that Kuwaiti authorities had arrested two more suspects in the shooting, including the man who allegedly provided the assault rifle. The source said he believed the two belonged to a group known as “Afghan Kuwaitis” because they were trained in militant camps in Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network ran several bases.
Kuwaiti officials have declined to comment on the reported arrests.
Caraway, sitting up in bed in the comny of his wife and a colleague, said shots rang out as he and Pouliot waited at a red light near the base.
“I knew we were coming under fire,” he said. “I didn’t know what direction it was coming from, how many people there were.”
“Your body goes into shock and I blacked out for a few seconds. When I woke up, the car was rolling across the intersection, and it stopped at an embankment,” he added. “I got out of the car and onto the ground so that people could see that I needed help.”
Both men were civilian contractors working for the U.S. military under the auspices of their San Diego, Calif.-based software company, Tapestry Solutions.
Caraway said doctors didn’t tell him for three days that Pouliot was killed.
Caraway said he hadn’t felt especially threatened in Kuwait, but his ordeal strengthened his belief in the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
“A lot of people think it’s just a phrase or empty slogan,” he said. “There is a war on terror, and it came home to me personally.”
Caraway said he would return to the United States in the next few days.