Friday, July 26, 2013

One death in Yemen shows how far the US will go to kill...

Some time after sunset on October 14, 2011, a group of teenagers were eating together at an open-air restaurant. Without warning, there was a devastating explosion - so devastating that when residents rushed to the scene, they found nothing left of the six teenage boys who had been sitting there. They had been blown to pieces.

That incident lasted mere minutes but an explanation of what happened that night and why still has not been unearthed and the repercussions of that explanation, if and when it comes, will have far reaching consequences for international law.

Here is what is known: one of those teenage boys was a 16-year old American citizen called Abdulrahman. He had been raised in the United States but had moved to Yemen around 10 years before his death. His father was Anwar Al Awlaki, a firebrand preacher that the US had put on a "kill list" and had assassinated with a drone strike two weeks before. Al Awlaki holds the notorious distinction of being the first US citizen "targeted" by the US government - the first time that the US has said in advance that it would seek to kill one of its own citizens without telling a court why.

Abdulrahman had not seen his father for years. He had left his family home in Yemen's capital, Sanaa, in September 2011 to try to find him, but his father was killed before they met. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. The drone that killed my grandson...
  2. 'Signature strikes' and Obama's empty rhetoric on drones...
  3. New report documents the human cost of U.S. drone strikes in Yemen...
  4. Amnesty slams US for ‘blatant attempt’ to influence journalist case in Yemen...
  5. Disgusted drone pilot quits air force...
  6. Obama lied about targets of drone strikes...
  7. Naming the dead: five stories of drone victims...
  8. Hey, hey, Barack! What do you say? How many kids have you killed today?

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