CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. (CN) - The Marines have flouted their duty to obtain justice for the young soldier gunned down in an Afghanistan gym, his family claims in Federal Court.
Gregory Buckley Jr., a 21-year-old lance corporal from Long Island, joined the military in 2009 after graduating from Oceanside High School, his father and aunt say. Having seen his father and uncle join first responders to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Buckley allegedly wanted to do his part as well.
The family says "Buck" had been stationed in Hawaii when he volunteered to go to Afghanistan, with hopes of becoming an officer.
On Aug. 10, 2012, while Buckley and others were working out in the Forward Operating Base Delhi, an Afghan teen who belonged to the "entourage" of a corrupt local police chief, Sarwar Jan, took an unsecured rifle, entered the unprotected gymnasium and opened fire, according to the complaint.
Ainuddin Khudairaham murdered Buckley, Cpl. Richard Rivera and Staff Sgt. Scott Dickinson, and he seriously wounded a fourth Marine, the complaint alleges.
Buckley's family says Jan was expelled two years prior as chief of Now Zad because he and others were kidnapping and keeping Afghan boys as sex slaves, trafficking narcotics and providing munitions to the Taliban to "facilitate insider attacks on Marine and other coalition forces."
The boys were known as "chai boys" or "tea boys," and part of a "cultural phenomenon" known as "Bacha Bazi," that Afghan police used after the fall of the Taliban. "The standard operating procedure" among the Marines was "to look the other way," Buckley's family claims.
They say the Marine Corps created a dossier on Jan, and that commanders were warned about the threat he posed, but ultimately took no action when Jan arrived at the base as the new chief of the Afghan police in July 2012.
Khudairaham allegedly announced, "I just did jihad," as he fled the gym on Aug. 10, and encouraged other Afghans on the base to do the same.
Buckley's family says their son's assailant was tried by Afghan law enforcement as a juvenile. Khudairaham allegedly lacked birth records but was thought to be 17 or 18 years old. He received the maximum seven-year sentence allowed by Afghan law, according to the complaint.
Cpt. Dustin Pratico, a spokesman for the Marine Corps, declined to comment on the lawsuit "as a matter of policy" Monday.
The gym shooting allegedly occurred a day after "another insider attack in the region in which Afghan police personnel shot to death several special forces Marines immediately after dining with them," the complaint states.
Buckley's family says no warnings were issued after that attack, and "no additional force protection stems were taken."
A month later, an attack by members of the Taliban wearing coalition uniforms on Camp Bastion, a British military base in Afghanistan, ended in the death of two Marines and the destruction of aircraft worth millions, according to the complaint.
"The Marine Corps initially refused to conduct any investigation into this debacle, provide information to the Gold Star families from Camp Bastion, or hold anyone accountable," Buckley's family says.
Congress, the media and families of those slain had to press for details to secure an investigation a year later, the lawsuit states.
That investigation led the Marines to relieve Major Gen. Charles Gurganus of his command, Buckley's family says.