Lawsuit seeks $100 million in Muslim recruit’s death

Marines accused of a ‘culture of abuse, hazing ’

The family of a Muslim Marine recruit from Taylor, Mich., who died in a fall at boot camp last year after allegedly being hazed and abused is suing the government for $100 million, claiming “negligence on multiple levels of command.”

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit claims the Marines “fostered a culture of abuse and hazing ” at the training base at Parris Island, S.C., that led to the death of 20-year-old Raheel Siddiqui in a three-story fall from a barracks stairwell in March 2016.

In the lawsuit, the family’s lawyer, Shiraz Khan of Southfield, Mich., wrote that “recurrent physical and verbal abuse of recruits by drill instructors, with a noted insufficiency of oversight and supervision” ultimately caused Siddiqui’s death.

The Marines have maintained that Siddiqui’s death, less than two weeks after he began boot camp, was a suicide, along with suggestions that Siddiqui was somehow not prepared for the rigors of Parris Island.

The Marine Corps did not immediately react to the lawsuit.

According to a preliminary investigation, Siddiqui had been abused physically and hazed and called “a terrorist” by his drill instructor.

That report said that the morning Siddiqui died, he had complained of a sore, bleeding throat but was refused medical attention, instead being forced to run laps over and over again in his barracks. When he collapsed on the floor, his drill instructor allegedly slapped him.

That is when Siddiqui ran through a door in the barracks and leaped over an exterior stairwell, falling three stories, the report said.

He died at a hospital several hours later. His family has maintained throughout that Siddiqui was constitutionally and morally incapable of killing himself as both a faithful Muslim and a son.

Siddiqui’s death sparked several investigations into complaints of hazing at Parris Island. The Marines say about 20 personnel were disciplined.