THE American soldier accused of launching a grenade and gun attack on his own unit, which killed a fellow serviceman and wounded 15, is a Muslim convert who screamed anti-American statements as he was arrested.

The suspect, Asan Akbar, 31, a sergeant with the 101st Airborne Division’s 326th Engineering Battalion, also told his mother and friends before he went to Kuwait in February that he opposed the war and believed his Muslim faith could land him in prison.

Akbar, an African-American who grew up near Los Angeles, was born Mark Fidel Kools. He had his name changed when he was young by his mother when she married his stepfather, William Muhummad Bilal — a Muslim convert — more than 20 years ago.

Last night, as the FBI and Pentagon investigated his life, including interviewing members of the Los Angeles mosque where he worshipped, concerns were mounting over the effect his actions may have on the US military’s 4,700 other Muslim members, many of whom are Arab-Americans.

What has shaken the US military is the premeditation of Akbar’s alleged attack, and the political motives behind it.

Akbar’s stepfather, speaking from the family home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, said yesterday that his stepson was not the first family member to find trouble serving in the Middle East because of their Muslim faith. Akbar’s half-brother, Mustafa Bilal, served in the US Air Force from 2000 to 2002, including a deployment to Kuwait.

According to an article in a local newspaper dated August 1, 2002, Mustafa was prevented from reading the Koran while he was stationed in Tajikistan and assigned “extra detail, picking up trash and counting bullets”.

The family says he was sent back to the US after he had an overdose of medication that he was taking for stress, and is no longer in the air force.

At 1.45am on Sunday Akbar, who had recently been disciplined for insubordination and told that he would be left behind in Kuwait when his unit deployed to Iraq, rolled two fragmentation grenades and two incendiary grenades into three tents where officers of the 101st Airborne’s 1st Brigade operations centre at Camp Pennsylvania, in the northern Kuwait desert, were sleeping.

As bloodied and wounded soldiers ran into the darkness Akbar, armed with an M4 automatic rifle, lay in wait and shot at least two of them from 3ft away, one in the back. One was identified yesterday as Captain Christopher Scott Seifert, 27, who died shortly afterwards.

As Akbar was being led away after the incident, fellow soldiers heard him shout: “You guys are coming into our countries and you’re going to rape our women and kill our children.”

Akbar’s mother, Quran Bilal, said yesterday that her son had expressed concerns about being a Muslim in the US Army. “He said: ‘Mama, when I get over there, I have the feeling they are going to arrest me just because of the name that I have carried,’ ” she said.

Akbar’s family moved last summer from Moreno Valley, 60 miles east of Los Angeles, to Baton Rouge. For the past year he had been living in $450-a-month bachelor’s quarters in an apartment complex in Clarkesville, Tennessee.

Willie Shamell, a neighbour, said that Akbar was a loner, but the night before he was deployed he dropped by to say he was going to Kuwait. Akbar told him: “America shouldn’t be going.” Mr Shamell said: “I know he didn’t like his unit that much. He didn’t get promoted. A lot of people feel discrimination is there at Fort Campbell.”

The army could seek the death penalty for Akbar. However, the US military has not executed a soldier for a war- related offence since 1945.

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