Rockets - remotely controlled with the help of a US military base on German soil - killed my relatives in Yemen.
Who is in charge?
Neither German nor US courts are prepared to clarify this question.
Drone operations raise sensitive ethical questions.
Again and again there are civilian victims of the operations of the
US military
.
A relative raises serious allegations in this post - also to the address of
Germany
.
This article is available in
German
for the first time
- it was first published on December 8th by
Foreign Policy
magazine
.
It's been eight years since my brother and my nephew by a by a
US drone
fired
Hellfire missile
were blown to pieces.
And I'm still fighting a wall of silence.
When a
German court
ruled me
last year, it seemed like some future accountability for the US drone program could finally apply.
But on November 25, the Federal Administrative Court ruled that Germany was not obliged to do more than diplomatically request the US government to conduct lawful trade - even though another court had previously determined that
Ramstein Air Base
in southwest Germany was doing one "Played a central role" in the drone strikes in Yemen, which "regularly lead to civilian casualties".
It is hard to put into words how I felt when my lawyer brought the news to me.
I'm used to setbacks, but this defeat hit me particularly hard.
I wonder if anyone will ever be held responsible for the suffering
caused by
the US drone strikes in Yemen
.
Yemen and the fight against terror: court in Münster ruled on drone victims - the first in the western world
Since visiting
Washington
in 2013, I have asked the same simple question over and over again: "How can it be that two innocent men who have actively campaigned against terrorism have been killed?" Well-meaning politicians in the
United States
,
Europe
and mine Homeland
Yemen
listened to my story and expressed their condolences, but they owed me an answer.
I
sued
the
Higher Administrative Court in Münster
and in March 2019
I received
a little satisfaction when the court found that the US drone program in Yemen was illegal.
The court further stated that Germany was jointly responsible for attacks like the one on my relatives: Without the base in Ramstein, the drones would not be able to fly the missions.
The reason why the military base plays such a crucial role is that it is the link in communication between the pilots in the
US
and the drones deployed in countries like Yemen.
It's hard to believe: this was the first time that a court in the western world was ready to take a stand on this issue.
The
US military
confirmed nor denied it, that it has fired the rocket, and when I before a US federal court moved to take action against this silence, I told the appeal court of the
District of Columbia
for no right of action, as only the
Congress
, the Right to
question
the
US President's
political decision
to kill people secretly and remotely.
Judge Janice Rogers Brown called Congressional oversight of the military a "joke" and warned of the "excessive power" that the president has to kill with that authority.
The case was nevertheless dismissed.
USA and Germany: What role does Ramstein play in drone attacks?
The German ruling in March 2019 also meant that, for the first time, an international partner of the United States was found to be potentially complicit in their global killing program.
The
United Nations Special Rapporteur
on Extrajudicial Executions, Agnès Callamard, called the verdict a "breakthrough".
It calls into question the legal basis with which the US government justifies its deadly drone operations.
Now even this small victory has been taken from us.
The Federal Administrative Court describes the role that Ramstein plays in the program as purely "technical" and
thus effectively
absolves
Germany
of any responsibility for what happens on its territory.
In fact, however, the air force base is indispensable in attacks like the one on my relatives, since the control of the US drones would not be possible without the satellite relay station there.
My village of Khashamir is currently not a war zone, and it wasn't in August 2012 when my relatives fell victim to the US missiles.
There are fighters in the region who can be
attributed to
Al-Qaeda
.
But these are foreigners who have little support from the locals.
Indictment from Yemen: Leaked cable could be the only evidence of serious US errors
My brother-in-law Salem was an
imam
who worked in the community to stand up to al-Qaeda.
After declaring in a sermon that there could be no justification for attacks on
civilians
, either in the Koran or under the law, three non-local young men asked him to meet.
He agreed.
He was deeply convinced that problems were solved with words, not weapons.
To this day we don't know who the men were or what they wanted.
Salem was aware that his sermon might have upset some.
So he took his nephew Waleed, a police officer, with him for his protection.
Little did he know that the threat did not come from the people he had dated, but from the US drone hovering overhead.
Was the US targeting one of the men he was seeing?
Did the pilot even know who he was shooting at?
Because the
US government
is silent, we don't know.
Our only evidence is a diplomatic cable that leaked.
It was sent a few hours after the attack and stated that a mistake had occurred and innocent people died.
USA: "We hunt down phones and just hope that the missile hits the right one"
When the rocket hit, my family was having dinner less than a mile away.
The earth shook.
We hurried out: a picture of horror presented itself to us.
Little did we know at first that our relatives were among the victims.
Due to the explosive power of the missile, nothing was left that could be identified spontaneously.
But after speaking to eyewitnesses, gathering scraps of clothing and burned body parts, we realized the terrible truth.
I learned a lot about
armed drones
in my long search for justice
, and now I know that the attack had what is known as a "signature strike".
In this case, the drone pilot does not know who he is trying to kill.
He only knows that the target person is exhibiting “suspicious” behavior.
A pattern
generated
from
metadata
.
The basis is often
cellular data
.
As one drone pilot put it: "We hunt for ... phones and just hope that the missile hits the right person in the end."
The report by the UN Special Rapporteur Agnès Callamard shows how many civilian - never admitted - casualties there actually are from armed drones.
For example, from 2009 to 2014 the US drone program in Yemen also killed
273 innocent men, women and children
while attempting to kill 17 extremists
.
Drone attacks: 86 civilian casualties during Donald Trump's tenure alone
The
Airwars monitoring group
published new findings in October.
It shows that at least 86 civilians, including 28 children, were killed in US drone strikes in Yemen during Trump's tenure.
The US no longer admitted that attacks were taking place at all: in mid-2019, the
US Central Command
last confirmed one attack.
Since then, Airwars has documented 30 reports of US attacks in Yemen on the ground, most likely ordered by the CIA.
The US Department of Defense doesn't even have a body that monitors how many civilian casualties there are in Yemen.
That does not surprise me.
The US government has systematically sabotaged my pursuit of justice and accountability.
The Supreme Court declined to hear my case and a letter to then-
President Barack Obama went
unanswered.
At least I managed
to speak
to representatives from the Foreign Ministry and the
National Security Council
.
They nodded politely, but I received no replies.
Yemen: "An employee handed me a blue plastic bag with 100,000 US dollars"
Shortly after my trip to Washington, I was summoned to the National Security Bureau in Yemen, the
CIA's
local partner
in my home country.
A staff member handed me a blue plastic bag with $ 100,000 in sequentially numbered $ 100 bills.
I wanted to know where the money came from and what it was for.
The answer was a shrug.
It was almost an
admission by the United States
- the only one - that they had killed Salem and Waleed: an anonymous payment, with no responsibility.
After consulting my relatives, we accepted the money.
Without the two breadwinners stolen from us in the middle of their lives, the family has a hard time making ends meet.
But if it was meant to be hush money - that didn't work.
If anything, the realization of the little value the US government places on the life of a Yemeni made me even more determined.
Salem and Waleed deserve at least an apology, as Obama rightly made in the case of the two white Western hostages his state killed while operating a drone in Pakistan.
USA / Germany: Appeal to Biden and Merkel - people in Yemen continue to live with deadly threat
Maybe the choice of
Joe Biden will give us
the chance to change direction, but I'm not confident.
Indeed, it was
President Donald Trump
who relaxed the targets and decided that the Pentagon no longer has to report numbers on civilian casualties - but the program was escalated worldwide under Obama.
I hope that Germany will stop supporting the United States in its criminal activities.
We in Yemen appreciate the fact that Germany is supporting our country during this difficult time of war.
That is why we are all the more disappointed that Germany is continuing to help the US attack our people with drones.
My family in Khashamir continues to live with the drones that regularly fly over their heads.
My little nieces don't know it any different: The
Reaper
and
Predator
and the deadly threat they represent have always been present to them.
It is often forgotten that there is a whole environment behind the civilian victims that has been traumatized for a long time by the events.
There is also the danger that such cowardly drone operations will
drive
young people into the arms of the
terrorist groups
.
Obama and Trump didn't seem to care.
Maybe the future President Biden and the
German Chancellor Angela Merkel
will think about it again.
by Faisal Bin Ali Jaber
Faisal Bin Ali Jaber
is an engineer and lives in Yemen.
This article was first published in English on December 8, 2020 in the magazine “ForeignPolicy.com” - as part of a cooperation, a translation is now also available to
Merkur.de
readers
.
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