Iran Focus
London, 12 Jun – Two Ohio parents have shared the heartbreaking story of the loss of their son and why the Iranian Regime must be held to account.
Les and Donna Kuglics wrote an opinion piece for Cleveland, in which they call for the Iranian Regime to be held responsible for the death of their son, Air Force Staff Sgt. Matthew Kuglics, who was killed by a roadside bomb in 2007, in Kirkuk, northern Iraq.
His parents believe that the terrorists who planted that bomb were being supported by the Iranian Regime and if it wasn’t for them, Matthew would still be alive today.
They wrote: “Matthew was everything you would want in a son, a serviceman and an American. Raised in Green, Ohio, since he was five years old, Matthew was a high school soccer player with an easy smile and a joke ever at the ready, always putting others before himself. That quality led him to enlist in the Air Force, where he served his country throughout the United States, in Korea, and, ultimately, in Iraq.”
Matthew was killed just days after his 25th birthday and although, Les and Donna have struggled to come to terms with his death, they have also fought to find out more.
They wrote: “We learned the explosion that killed Matthew was no ordinary roadside bomb. It was called an explosively formed penetrator or EFP. The military calls it a shaped charge because, when the bomb is detonated, a copper cone is formed into a slug that can punch through armoured vehicles like the up-armored Chevy Suburban Matthew was in.”
They continued: “We also learned that the U.S. military had traced these EFPs to Iran and that Iran’s leadership was supplying them to local militias it controlled to target U.S. service members in Iraq.”
At the time, Iran was still under economic sanctions from most of the world and has to finance their terrorist activity with the help of others, including a financial clearinghouse system which was based in the United States.
Les and Donna wrote: “These attacks were not acts of war carried out by Iraqi, or even Iranian, soldiers in uniform. They were terrorist attacks, committed by Iranian-sponsored killers trained to blend into the civilian population that killed or wounded hundreds of Americans.”
That is why the Kuglics chose to join with more than a hundred families who had lost loved ones as a result of these terror attacks and bring lawsuits against the Iranian Regime and the financial institutions that funded them.
The process is slow and the Regime has not yet responded, but the Kuglics want to prove the Regime’s involvement in Matthew’s death and have it recognised in a court of law.
They wrote: “Although the outcome is uncertain, we hope that, as the facts become known about the terrorism Iran perpetrated and its bankers facilitated against our troops in Iraq, justice will prevail. That won’t heal the wound opened in our lives ten year ago, but it will serve as a fitting tribute to our son and the life he sacrificed for our country.”
