Dad of Marine Killed in Afghanistan Charged After Heckling Biden During SOTU

The father of a U.S. Marine killed during the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan in 2021 was charged with a misdemeanor after he disrupted President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address Thursday.

Steve Nikoui, 51, attended the speech as the guest of Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL). He was removed from the chamber and arrested by Capitol Police after he interrupted Biden with shouts of “Abbey Gate”—the entrance at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, where a suicide bomber killed 170 civilians and 13 U.S. service members, including Nikoui’s son, Lance Corporal Kareem Nikoui.

Capitol Police told Axios that officers told Nikoui to stop but he persisted, at which point he was taken out of the gallery and arrested. A spokesperson for the agency said he was charged with a local misdemeanor charge of “crowding, obstructing or incommoding.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.