The soldier suspected of killing a fellow soldier and wounding 15 others was identified Sunday as Sergeant Asan Akbar, who, a military official said, had "an attitude problem."
Akbar, a soldier in an engineer unit, is noow under investigation in a grenade and small-arms attack on the command tents of the 101st Airborne Division in Kuwait Sunday morning.
George Heath, the deputy public affairs officer at Fort Campbell, the division's base, provided few personnel details but said Akbar had been in the Army long enough to have attained the rank of sergeant and to have commanded four to eight men.
"He was having what some people might call an attitude problem," Heath said, declining to provide further explanation. Asked about a motive for the attack, he said, "I've heard some people say it may have been retribution."
Standing nervously outside his brick house in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the front door draped with an American flag, Akbar's stepfather, William Bilal, 52, pondered what might have troubled his stepson. "His mother doesn't believe it's him, you know, the heart of a mother," Bilal said. "I'm not saying it's not him, but I don't know. I'd like to know."
The family spells Akbar's first name "Hasan." His mother, Quran Bilal, was inside the house but declined to speak. Bilal said she worked as a driver.
"I remember last Christmas he was complaining about the double standards in the military," Bilal said. "Hasan told me it was difficult for a black man to get rank in the military, and he was having a hard time."
Military officials had described the sergeant as a Muslim convert.
Heath said Sunday that Akbar might have adopted his name recently, but he could not provide an earlier name. He said he did not know the man's religion, but added, "I heard from a reliable source that he may have converted to Islam."
The Tennessean, a Nashville newspaper, reported Sunday on its Web site that Akbar was named Mark Fidel Kools at his birth and that his mother changed his name to Hasan Akbar when he was a young boy.
Akbar grew up in Baton Rouge and in Southern California. On Sunday, Bilal said, "If he did do it, then it was either pressure of this or a combination of things. If they link Hasan to the grenades, after a proper investigation and leads and everything points to him, then we'll put it in the hands of God. We all have to try and uphold the law."
Bilal, an air conditioner salesman, rejected speculation that Akbar felt uncomfortable in the Army because of his religion. "He never expressed those concerns to me," he said.
Bilal said that his stepson did not have a violent past and that his upbringing was "normal, with no problems."
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