Lawmakers seek Purple Heart for victims of Little Rock shooting

Arkansas lawmakers are asking the Army to award Purple Hearts to two soldiers shot by a radicalized Muslim in June 2009 at a recruiting center in Little Rock, Ark.

“Given that it has been more than five years since this attack, it is unacceptable that this medal has not been awarded to Private Quinton Ezeagwula and to the family of Private William Andrew Long,” Rep. Tim Griffin, Sen. John Boozman and Sen.-elect Tom Cotton, all Republicans, said in a Dec. 17 letter to Army Secretary John McHugh.

{mosads}Long was killed and Ezeagwula wounded in the shooting.

The shooter, Abdulhakim Muhammad, was known as Carlos Bledsoe before converting to Islam. He told investigators he wanted to kill as many Army personnel as he could “because of what they had done to Muslims in the past.”

The lawmakers are asking the Army secretary to use a provision in the pending defense authorization bill that would expand eligibility for the Purple Heart to include “members of the Armed Forces who have been killed or wounded in an attack inspired or motivated by a foreign terrorist.”

The language is the result of a years-long campaign by GOP lawmakers to see domestic victims of terror honored, following the 2009 shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, in which Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan killed 13 people.

Lawmakers sought to classify that shooting as a terrorist attack in a combat zone, to allow the awarding of Purple Hearts to soldiers killed or wounded.

Hasan had been in contact with al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki, and victims argued that they should be eligible for extra combat benefits.

The Defense Department classified the incident as workplace violence, rather than an act of terrorism, making the shooting victims ineligible for the Purple Heart and other combat-injury compensation.

The Arkansas lawmakers say the new guidelines in the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) apply to the Little Rock case as well.

They noted Muhammad, who pleaded guilty to charges of capital murder and attempted capital murder and was sentenced to life in prison, “repeatedly admitted that he was a soldier in the cause of war — or jihad — against the United States” during his 2011 trial. They added that he targeted the two soldiers “because they wore the uniform of the U.S. Army.”

Muhammad also admitted traveling to Yemen in 2007, where he “consorted with known members of Al Qaeda including discussing attacks on American military personnel,” the lawmakers said.

“Under the newly established criteria, there is no longer any excuse to refuse these men the Purple Heart.”

Congress approved the defense authorization act last week, but the president has not yet signed it.