U.S. War Crimes 5

Ron heeft een nieuwe reactie op je bericht "U.S. Drone Crimes" achtergelaten: 

Faisal bin ali Jaber, a Yemeni engineer whose innocent family members were killed by a U.S. drone, said:
"I read that the Americans have very little knowledge of the innocent civilians they are killing in Yemen. This is no surprise to Yemenis. For years, we have been confused by the sharp contrast between what we see with our own eyes and what the US government tells the world. Slowly, the whole truth will come out. I hope that my American court case will help that happen. But how many innocent Yemeni men, women and children will die before it does?"

http://www.reprieve.org/drones-revelations-reprieve-us-comment.html 

PRESS RELEASE: Friday October 16, 2015

Drones revelations: Yemeni victim and Reprieve comment
 
Commenting on leaked information about the U.S. drone program published by The Intercept:

Faisal bin ali Jaber, a Yemeni engineer whose innocent family members were killed by a U.S. drone, said: "I read that the Americans have very little knowledge of the innocent civilians they are killing in Yemen. This is no surprise to Yemenis. For years, we have been confused by the sharp contrast between what we see with our own eyes and what the US government tells the world. Slowly, the whole truth will come out. I hope that my American court case will help that happen. But how many innocent Yemeni men, women and children will die before it does?"

Joe Pace, Reprieve U.S. lawyer for Mr al Jaber, said:  "We were told that the drone program was "safe" and "effective". When we raised concerns with the Administration that it was anything but, we were told "trust us". These leaked reports confirming the staggering inaccuracy of the U.S drone program may be news to the American people who have been lied to by this Administration, but there's nothing revelatory for Mr. al Jaber or the millions who live under constant threat of U.S. drone strikes.  Mr. al Jaber and countless others have witnessed their loved ones literally blown to pieces based on a toxic combination of garbage intelligence and U.S. indifference to foreign lives.  All he has ever asked for is a simple apology and an explanation. It is unacceptable that he has had to file a lawsuit to get such basic relief. And it is absurd to think that we are making ourselves safer by terrorizing the people of Yemen from the skies and withholding any accountability when our drones kill innocent people."

ENDS

Notes to Editors
 
1. Reprieve is an international human rights group. For more information katherine.oshea@reprieve.org/ +1 917 855 8064

2. Faisal bin Ali Jaber lost his nephew Waleed and his brother-in-law Salem in a US drone attack in the village of Khashamir on August 29 2012. Waleed was a local policeman, and Salem was an imam who was known for speaking out against al-Qaeda in his sermons – including on the Friday before he was killed. 

Faisal has filed a lawsuit against President Obama, seeking a declaration from a federal court in Washington, D.C., that the 2012 strike was unlawful and his innocent relatives were wrongfully killed. Last week, the Obama administration filed a motion asking the court to dismiss Mr bin Ali Jaber’s case entirely. They argued that Mr Jaber has no standing – i.e. that he has no legal right to bring his case in the US - and that whether a US drone killed his relatives is a ‘political question’ that no court should review.
 
Previously, in November 2013 Mr bin Ali Jaber travelled to Washington, D.C. where he had meetings with White House and NSC officials about his relative’s deaths. No US official suggested then that Mr. Jaber, who is the appointed representative of the Jaber family estates, lacked authority to speak for the family.

After the strike and Faisal’s travels to the US, Faisal’s relatives were given a plastic bag containing $100,000 in sequentially-marked US dollar bills as a condolence payment, but the US has never admitted responsibility for the killings.
 
Mr bin Ali Jaber had also written to the White House offering to settle the case on one condition – that he receive a public apology from the US. He did so in the footsteps of President Obama’s apology, earlier this year, to the families of Giovanni Lo Porto and Warren Weinstein, an Italian and an American citizen who were killed in a US drone strike in Pakistan in January. It marked the first known US acknowledgement of responsibility for civilian deaths under the drone program.

In a letter to President Obama, Cori Crider – Mr bin Ali Jaber’s lawyer at Reprieve – writes: “I write today to make a formal offer of settlement. In consideration for dropping this lawsuit, Mr. Jaber asks for nothing more than what you gave the families of Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto: an apology and an explanation as to why a strike that killed two innocent civilians was authorized.”
 
Covert strikes by the CIA in Yemen and Pakistan are believed to have killed hundreds of civilians, but the US has never formally admitted responsibility beyond the deaths of Mr Lo Porto and Mr Weinstein.