A Marine sniper’s testimony that he had an opportunity to take out the Abbey Gate suicide bomber during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan came as a surprise to family and advocates of one of the service members killed in the attack, they told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) conducted an investigation into the events leading up to the suicide bombing on August 26, 2021 that killed 13 U.S. military personnel aiding the evacuation of Afghan allies after the Taliban captured Kabul. Family of the deceased received in-person briefings a short while before CENTCOM made public the unclassified version of the final report, but one family member and two advocates said the briefers never provided any indication that the Marine snipers had a missed chance to engage the bomber.
“They said nobody knew where he was at that time or what he looked like at that time,” Shana Chappell, the mother of 20-year-old Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui, who died in the blast, told the DCNF.
“What [the sniper] had said I had already known about, because other Marines had talked about it before the investigation had even happened,” she added. “There was just a lot of stuff that didn’t add up that I had been told by the Marines that were there, and none of it was mentioned in the report that was given to us.”
The investigation concluded a lone suicide bomber managed to bypass Taliban checkpoints at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, detonating an explosive vest that also contained ball bearings at 5:36 p.m, according to the report. ISIS later claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed up to 170 Afghan civilians and 13 U.S. servicemembers, as well as wounding dozens more.
Briefers, including a Marine Corps colonel, a military justice officer, a major and a non-commissioned officer, presented a slideshow and a spiral-bound booklet to Nikoui’s parents in January 2022 on the events of the attack. Retired Col. Kurt Schlichter, a trial lawyer and media figure representing Chappell, and retired Col. Seth Goldberg, a lawyer, attended the briefing by request to support the family with legal and military expertise, and confirmed the briefing contents to the DCNF.
They told the DCNF that they understood the families of the remaining deceased received similar briefings around the same time.
“There was nothing about knowing who the guy was — who the terrorist was —nothing about having eyes on [him], nothing about the battalion commander being requested permission to fire — nothing about any of that,” Schlichter told the DCNF.
However, at a House hearing on March 8, Marine Corps Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews said he, Sgt. Charles Schilling and an unnamed individual spotted the suicide bomber from their perch in the sniper tower, located near the sewage canal and the gate itself, sometime just before 1 p.m. on the day of the blast, according to a transcript. The unnamed individual had previously provided descriptions of the man who Vargas-Andrews believed to be the suicide bomber.
Vargas-Andrews requested permission to engage with the suspect and presented evidence to the battalion commander, LT. Col. Brad Whited, Vargas-Andrews testified.
“We asked if we could shoot. Our battalion commander said, ‘I don’t know,’” Vargas-Andrews told Congress.
“If it was classified, and they withheld it for that reason, the briefing that the families gave was entirely misleading and you don’t have to