Families Sue Jordan Over 2016 Deaths of 3 U.S. Green Berets

WASHINGTON — The families of three Army Special Forces soldiers who were fatally shot by a Jordanian base guard in 2016 said on Friday that they had sued the kingdom over false accusations that the Green Berets provoked the killings — accounts disputed by a video of the attack.

The three soldiers — Staff Sgts. Matthew C. Lewellen, Kevin J. McEnroe and James F. Moriarty — were stationed in Jordan as part of a CIA-run program to train Syrian rebels. They were shot at close range by 1st Sgt. Maarik al-Tawayha, a guard in the Jordanian Air Force, when their convoy was stopped at the gate of the King Faisal air base after a training mission on Nov. 4, 2016.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, seeks unspecified monetary damages from the Jordanian government.

“For life to work, we have to be willing to hold the powerful accountable,” James Moriarty, the father of Sergeant Moriarty, said at an emotional news conference Friday. He also urged the United States to re-examine its long-standing alliance with Jordan.

Tawayha was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison in July 2017. During the trial, he offered no explanation for the attack, and he said after a hearing that “I was doing my job.”

On Friday, Moriarty and the fathers of Lewellen and McEnroe said the Jordanian government had made false leaks to the news media asserting that the Green Berets had been drinking before they returned to the base, and had accidentally fired one of their pistols at the gate.

A six-minute video of the shootings, taken from a security camera and released after Tawayha’s sentencing, appears to show a different sequence of events at the gate. In it, Moriarty is seen trying to defuse the situation by raising his hands after McEnroe and Lewellen were shot.

The lawsuit said the Kingdom of Jordan had “aided and abetted this terrorist act,” and it accused Tawayha of having “hunted down and brutally murdered their loved ones.” It said the kingdom had initially defended Tawayha by asserting that he had acted “within internationally accepted rules of engagement.”

Neither the FBI nor Jordanian officials have linked Tawayha to any extremist groups.

In a statement, the Jordanian Embassy in Washington did not directly comment on the lawsuit but said that “Jordan successfully prosecuted the perpetrator, and he is now serving a life sentence.”

“Jordan deeply regrets the tragedy, and has done its best to achieve justice,” the statement said.