Yemeni engineer Faisal bin Ali Jaber, whose brother-in-law Salim bin Ali Jaber, an anti-al Qaeda cleric; and 26-year-old nephew Walid Abdullah bin Ali Jaber, were killed in a drone strike in Yemen’s southeastern Hadramawt province on on August 29, 2012, speaks at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington on November 15, 2013. (Photo credit NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)
An attempt by 3 Yemenis, Faisal bin Ali Jaber, Ahmed Saeed bin Ali Jaber and Khaled Mohmed Naser bin Ali Jaber to hold Germany accountable for its role in collaborating with the US on drone strikes in Yemen via Ramstein airbase was dismissed by a court in Cologne this week.
According to the Guardian, the men lost relatives in a drone attack and Faisal bin Ali Jaber was awarded “blood money” of $100,000 (£65,000) from the US government for a strike which killed Salim bin Ali Jaber, 43, and his son Walid Abdullah bin Ali Jaber, a 26-year-old policeman who were “meeting representatives of al-Qaida in the Arab Peninsula in the village of Khashamir on 29 August 2012”. A judge ruled that the German government was “not obliged to prohibit US from using Ramstein airbase for relaying drone control signalling but allows campaigners to appeal.
See article below for full story,
“Court dismisses claim of German complicity in Yemeni drone killings”
The European Centre for Consitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) General Secretary Wolfgang Kaleck made the following comment after the hearing,
“today’s decision allows the German government to continue to play the innocent. See nothing, hear nothing, say nothing – with this strategy the government cannot and will not be able to meet its obligation to prevent human rights violations committed by the USA via German territory. On the contrary, with this approach Germany is making itself complicit in the deaths of civilians as part of the US drone war.”
The ECCHR press release and further comments on the case can be read here,
“No end in sight for drone war via Ramstein”
http://www.ecchr.de/drones.html
An appeal may be launched at a future date.
Link
“Yemeni man granted permission to continue case against German government over role in US drone strikes”
Carol Anne Grayson is an independent writer/researcher on global health/human rights/WOT and is Executive Producer of the Oscar nominated, Incident in New Baghdad . She is a Registered Mental Nurse with a Masters in Gender Culture and Development. Carol was awarded the ESRC, Michael Young Prize for Research 2009, and the COTT ‘Action = Life’ Human Rights Award’ for “upholding truth and justice”. She is also a survivor of US “collateral damage”.
Carol Anne Grayson (Radical Sister) blog 