Geolocation
Airwars assessment
Four AQAP militants were killed in a confirmed CIA drone strike on Jawf, reports said. There are currently no reports of civilian harm from this strike.
Anwar al Awlaki, the US-born cleric, apparently became the first US citizen to be deliberately killed by the CIA in a drone strike, part of Operation Troy. The attack – assisted by JSOC – also killed US citizen Samir Khan, editor of AQAP’s Inspire magazine, Abu Muhsen al Maribi (or Mohammed bin Muhsen) and Salem al Marwani (aka Salem bin Arfaj). Bomb maker Ibrahim Hassan al Asiri was also initially reported killed in the blast but Associated Press reported he survived.
Al Asiri reportedly made the bomb for the December 2009 “underwear bomber” plot to bring down a jet over Detroit. He is also said to have been behind the devices sent to targets in the US aboard a cargo plane in October 2010. Following this strike al Asiri went to ground, resurfacing more than six months later.
In a May 2013 letter Attorney-General Eric Holder revealed the US deliberately targeted al Awlaki. However Khan was “not specifically targeted by the United States”, Holder added. The letter was a response to requests for information on drone strikes from Patrick Leahy, chair of the US Senate Judiciary Committee.
NBC News journalist Richard Engel tweeted that two cars were struck by “missiles from US aircraft” that killed Anwar al-Awlaki and Bin Arfaj, another al Qaeda operative. Al-Awlaki, the New Mexico-born operative was “the leading English-speaking member of Al Qaeda”, according to Time magazine. These English skills made him particularly dangerous and aided him in appealing to disaffected young men. Nidal Hassan, who killed thirteen people at Fort Hood military base was among those who listened to the teachings of al-Awlaki.
According to the Washington Post, after locating al-Awlaki the CIA assembled a fleet of armed drones to target him: “The choreography of the strike, which involved four drones, was intricate. Two Predators pointed lasers at Awlaki’s vehicle, and a third circled to make sure that no civilians wandered into the cross hairs.” Moved from Pakistani to Yemeni territory, two US Predator drones and two larger Reaper drones encircled and then destroyed the car carrying Al-Awlaki.
The Nation reported that even more military hardware was involved: As the vehicles made their way over the dusty, unpaved roads, US drones, armed with Hellfire missiles, were dispatched to hunt them down. The drones were technically under the command of the CIA, though JSOC aircraft and ground forces were poised to assist. A team of commandos stood at the ready to board V-22 helicopters. As an added measure, Marine Harrier jets scrambled in a backup maneuver.
According to the New York Times, the CIA had just finished building a secret drone base in Saudi Arabia and President Obama’s chief counterterrorism advisor John Brennan directed the Agency take full responsibility for killing Awlaki.
David Petraeus, then director of the CIA, ordered several drones be relocated from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia. Newsweek later reported that the US had been observing Awlaki at the location for two weeks but did not attack because of the presence of children. On the morning of September 30th, however, Awlaki and several of his companions left the safe house and walked about 700 yards to their parked cars. As they were getting into the vehicles, they were blown apart by two Hellfire missiles fired by Reaper drones.
The killing of Khan and Awlaki – and Awlaki’s 16-year old son a week later – led for calls for the US to publish the legal basis on which it had “extrajudicially executed US citizens”, as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) put it.
On December 20th 2011, the New York Times filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration, seeking the release of the Justice Department legal opinion in the Awlaki case, which the department would not disclose. The New York Times had previously reported that the secret memo which authorised the killing stated that it would be lawful “only if it were not feasible to take him alive”.
The memo was “narrowly drawn to the specifics of Mr Alwaki’s case” and circumvented “an executive order banning assassinations, a federal law against murder, protections in the Bill of Rights and various strictures of the international laws of war,” said the New York Times.
In November 2012, it emerged that the US had tried to strip Awlaki of his US passport six months before his death. On the first anniversary of his death, Anwar al Awlaki’s father alleged that Yemen’s government was complicit in his death, saying that ‘there was an agreement between the Yemeni intelligence and the CIA, under which the former abided to submit daily reports on the activities of Anwar al-Awlaki and his movements.’ Dr Nasser al-Awlaki also said that he last met his son in April 2009 after former President Ali Abdullah Saleh had asked him to convince Anwar to return to Sana’a.
But Anwar refused, because the then Interior Minister ordered Shabwah governor and security director to arrest Anwar for no reason.
In April 2014 a US court said that Washington officials could not be held accountable for the death of Anwar al Awlaki, Samir Khan or Abdel Rahman al Awlaki. The court dismissed a suit brought against several officials including then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and then-CIA Director David Petraeus on behalf of Awlaki’s parents by the ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights.
Circuit Court justice Rosemary Collyer said allowing the suit to continue against individual officials “would impermissibly draw the court into “the heart of executive and military planning and deliberation”. She added: ‘“In this delicate area of war-making, national security, and foreign relations, the judiciary has an exceedingly limited role.”
Due to the actions of a federal judge in December of 2010, the Obama administration was cleared to continue to pursue Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen living in Yemen and alleged member of Al Qaeda. Despite the radicalization of Mr. Al-Awlaki, Jameer Jaffer, a lawyer for the ACLU believed that this court decision would allow the American government to potential kill any American citizen deemed a potential threat to the national security.
An ABC News report quoted President Barack Obama as noting that the death of al-Awlaki dealt a “major blow” to al-Qaeda, and Reuters reported that Obama described the strike as a “significant milestone” in the fight against terrorism, but the killing of an American citizen by American military planes raises difficult questions about the significance of personal liberties when weighed against national security. The same Reuters report noted that American officials believed that Al-Awlaki was planning to use ricin and cyanide in attacks upon Westerners. While earlier reports noted American planes conducted the fatal attack, the BBC reported that American drones killed al-Awlaki. The American born cleric, who graduated from Colorado State and later San Diego State with a master’s degree in education, had gained increasing popularity with fiery sermons that called for violence, and American officials believed that he was the leader of Al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). He is credited with recruiting Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the infamous “underwear bomber” caught on Christmas day, 2009. However, the exact role Al-Awlaki played within AQAP is uncertain. Jeremy Binnie, a London-based terrorism analyst said the Al-Awlaki will be “difficult to replace”, while the Reuters article also stated that Al-Awlaki was neither a “commander of AQAP” nor a “senior Islamic cleric”. The importance of Al-Awlaki remained insignificant to Yemeni citizen Fayza al-Suleimani who said, “Nobody cared about his [al-Awlaki] death. We have bigger problems than Anwar Al-Awlaki.”
The incident occured at 09:55:00 local time.
Geolocation notes
Reports of the incident mention the governorate of Jawf (الجوف), for which the generic coordinates are: 16.612171, 45.670558. Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further.
Summary
Sources (98) [ collapse]
Media
from sources (11) [ collapse]
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Anwar al Awlaki (via AQAP's Inspire 6)
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"American-Born Qaeda Leader Is Killed by U S Missile in Yemen" 9( via Getty/AP)
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Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American Muslim cleric of Yemeni descent, killed by US drones on September 30, 2011. (Image posted by BBC)
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Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American Muslim cleric of Yemeni descent, killed by US drones on September 30, 2011. (Image posted by Islamist Movements)
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Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American Muslim cleric of Yemeni descent, killed by US drones on September 30, 2011. (Image posted by Islamist Movements)
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Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American Muslim cleric of Yemeni descent, killed by US drones on September 30, 2011. (Image posted by Islamist Movements)
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Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American Muslim cleric of Yemeni descent, killed by US drones on September 30, 2011. (Image posted by Islamist Movements)
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Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American Muslim cleric of Yemeni descent, killed by US drones on September 30, 2011. (Image posted by New York Times)
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Samir Khan, killed by US drones on September 30, 2011. (Image posted by Long War Journal)
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Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American Muslim cleric of Yemeni descent, killed by US drones on September 30, 2011. (Image posted by Long War Journal)
US Forces Assessment:
Original strike reports
Dear Mr. Chairman:
Since entering office, the President has made clear his commitment to providing
Congress and the American people with as much information as possible about our
sensitive counterterrorism operations, consistent with our national security and the proper
functioning of the Executive Branch. Doing so is necessary, the President stated in his
May 21, 2009 National Archives speech, because it enables the citizens of our democracy
to "make informed judgments and hold [their Government] accountable."
In furtherance of this commitment, the Administration has provided an
unprecedented level of transparency into how sensitive counterterrorism operations are
conducted. Several senior Administration officials, including myself, have taken
numerous steps to explain publicly the legal basis for the United States' actions to the
American people and the Congress. For example, in March 2012, I delivered an address
at Northwestern University Law School discussing certain aspects of the
Administration's counterterrorism legal framework. And the Department of Justice and
other departments and agencies have continually worked with the appropriate oversight
committees in the Congress to ensure that those committees are fully informed of the
legal basis for our actions.
The Administration is determined to continue these extensive outreach efforts to
communicate with the American people. Indeed, the President reiterated in his State of
the Union address earlier this year that he would continue to engage with the Congress
about our counterterrorism efforts to ensure that they remain consistent with our laws and
values, and become more transparent to the American people and to the world.
To this end, the President has directed me to disclose certain information that until
now has been properly classified. You and other Members of your Committee have on
numerous occasions expressed a particular interest in the Administration's use of lethal
force against U.S. citizens. In light of this fact, I am writing to disclose to you certain
information about the number of U.S. citizens who have been killed by U.S.
counterterrorism operations outside of areas of active hostilities. Since 2009, the United
States, in the conduct of U.S. counterterrorism operations against al-Qa'ida and its
associated forces outside of areas of active hostilities, has specifically targeted and killed
one U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Aulaqi. The United States is further aware of three other U.S.
citizens who have been killed in such U.S. counterterrorism operations over that same
time period: Samir Khan, 'Abd al-Rahman Anwar al-Aulaqi, and Jude Kenan
Mohammed. These individuals were not specifically targeted by the United States.
As I noted in my speech at Northwestern, "it is an unfortunate but undeniable
fact" that a "small number" of U.S. citizens "have decided to commit violent attacks
against their own country from abroad." Based on generations-old legal principles and
Supreme Court decisions handed down during World War II, as well as during the
current conflict, it is clear and logical that United States citizenship alone does not make
such individuals immune from being targeted. Rather, it means that the government must
take special care and take into account all relevant constitutional considerations, the laws
of war, and other law with respect to U.S. citizens -- even those who are leading efforts to
kill their fellow, innocent Americans. Such considerations allow for the use of lethal
force in a foreign country against a U.S. citizen who is a senior operational leader of al-
Qa'ida or its associated forces, and who is actively engaged in planning to kill
Americans, in the following circumstances: (1) the U.S. government has determined,
after a thorough and careful review, that the individual poses an imminent threat of
violent attack against the United States; (2) capture is not feasible; and (3) the operation
would be conducted in a manner consistent with applicable law of war principles.
These conditions should not come as a surprise: the Administration's legal views
on this weighty issue have been clear and consistent over time. The analysis in my
speech at Northwestern University Law School is entirely consistent with not only the
analysis found in the unclassified white paper the Department of Justice provided to your
Committee soon after my speech, but also with the classified analysis the Department
shared with other congressional committees in May 2011 -- months before the operation
that resulted in the death of Anwar al-Aulaqi. The analysis in my speech is also entirely
consistent with the classified legal advice on this issue the Department of Justice has
shared with your Committee more recently. In short, the Administration has
demonstrated its commitment to discussing with the Congress and the American people
the circumstances in which it could lawfully use lethal force in a foreign country against
a U.S. citizen who is a senior operational leader of al-Qa'ida or its associated forces, and
who is actively engaged in planning to kill Americans.
Anwar al-Aulaqi plainly satisfied all of the conditions I outlined in my speech at
Northwestern. Let me be more specific. Al-Aulaqi was a senior operational leader of al-
Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the most dangerous regional affiliate of al-
Qa'ida and a group that has committed numerous terrorist attacks overseas and attempted
multiple times to conduct terrorist attacks against the U.S. homeland. And al-Aulaqi was
not just a senior leader of AQAP -- he was the group's chief of external operations,
intimately involved in detailed planning and putting in place plots against U.S. persons.
In this role, al-Aulaqi repeatedly made clear his intent to attack U.S. persons and
his hope that these attacks would take American lives. For example. in a message to
Muslims living in the United States, he noted that he had come "to the conclusion that
jihad against America is binding upon myself just as it is binding upon every other able
Muslim." But it was not al-Aulaqi's words that led the United States to act against him:
they only served to demonstrate his intentions and state of mind, that he "pray[ed] that
Allah [would] destro America and all its allies." Rather, it was al-Aulaqi's actions --
and, in particular, his direct personal involvement in the continued planning and
execution of terrorist attacks against the U.S. homeland -- that made him a lawful target
and led the United States to take action.
For example, when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab -- the individual who attempted
to blow up an airplane bound for Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 -- went to Yemen in
2009, al--Aulaqi arranged an introduction via text message. Abdulmutallab told U.S.
officials that he stayed at al-Aulaqi's house for three days, and then spent two weeks at
an AQAP training camp. Al-Aulaqi planned a suicide operation for Abdulmutallab,
helped Abdulmutallab draft a statement for a video to be shown after the
attack, and directed him to take down a U.S. airliner. Al-Aulaqi's last instructions were
to blow up the airplane when it was over American soil. Al-Aulaqi also played a key role
in the October 2010 plot to detonate explosive devices on two U.S.-bound cargo planes:
he not only helped plan and oversee the plot, but was also directly involved in the details
of its execution to the point that he took part in the development and testing of the
explosive devices that were placed on the planes. Moreover, information that remains
classified to protect sensitive sources and methods evidences al-Aulaqi's involvement in
the planning of numerous plots against U.S. and Western interests and makes clear
he was continuing to plot attacks when he was killed.
Based on this information, high-level U.S. government officials appropriately
concluded that al-Aulaqi posed a continuing and imminent threat of violent attack against
the United States. Before carrying out the operation that killed al-Aulaqi, senior officials
also determined, based on a careful evaluation of the circumstances at the time, that it
was not feasible to capture al-Aulaqi. In addition, senior officials determined that the
operation would be conducted consistent with applicable law of war principles, including
the cardinal principles of (1) necessity -- the requirement that the target have definite
military value; (2) distinction -- the idea that only military objectives may be intentionally
targeted and that civilians are protected from being intentionally targeted; (3)
proportionality -- the notion that the anticipated collateral damage of an action cannot be
excessive in relation to the anticipated concrete and direct military advantage; and (4)
humanity -- a principle that requires us to use weapons that will not inflict unnecessary
suffering. The operation was also undertaken consistent with Yemeni sovereignty.
While a substantial amount of information indicated that Anwar al-Aulaqi was a
senior AQAP leader actively plotting to kill Americans, the decision that he was a lawful
target was not taken The decision to use lethal force is one of the gravest that our
government, at every level, can face. The operation to target Anwar a1--Aulaqi was thus
subjected to an exceptionally rigorous interagency legal review: not only did I and other
Department of Justice lawyers conclude after a thorough and searching review that the
operation was lawful, but so too did other departments and agencies within the U.S.
government.
The decision to target Anwar al-Aulaqi was additionally subjected to extensive
policy review at the highest levels of the U.S. Government, and senior U.S. officials also
briefed the appropriate committees of Congress on the possibility of using lethal force
against al--Aulaq i. Indeed, the Administration informed the relevant congressional
oversight committees that it had approved the use of lethal force against al-Aulaqi in
February 2010 -- well over a year before the operation in question -- and the legal
justification was subsequently explained in detail to those committees, well before action
was taken against Aulaqi. This extensive outreach is consistent with the Administration's
strong and continuing commitment to congressional oversight of our counterterrorism
operations -- oversight which ensures, as the President stated during his State of the
Union address, that our actions are "consistent with our laws and system of checks and
balances."
The Supreme Court has long "made clear that a state of war is not a blank check
for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens." Hamdi v.
Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507, 536 (2004); Youngstown Sheet Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S.
578, 5 87 (1952). But the Court's case law and longstanding practice and principle also
make clear that the Constitution does not prohibit the Government it establishes from
taking action to protect the American people from the threats posed by terrorists who hide
in faraway countries and continually plan and launch plots against the U.S. homeland.
The decision to target Anwar al-Aulaqi was lawful, it was considered, and it was just.
This letter is only one of a number of steps the Administration will be taking to
fulfill the President's State of the Union commitment to engage with Congress and the
American people on our counterterrorism efforts. This week the President approved and
relevant congressional committees will be notified and briefed on a document that
institutionalizes the Administration's exacting standards and processes for reviewing and
approving operations to capture or use lethal force against terrorist targets outside the
United States and areas of active hostilities; these standards and processes are either
already in place or are to be transitioned into place. While that document remains
classified, it makes clear that a cornerstone of the Administration's policy is one of the
principles I noted in my speech at Northwestern: that lethal force should not be used
when it is feasible to capture a terrorist suspect. For circumstances in which capture is
feasible, the policy outlines standards and procedures to ensure that operations to take
into custody a terrorist suspect are conducted in accordance with all applicable law,
including the laws of war. When capture is not feasible, the policy provides that lethal
force may be used only when a terrorist target poses a continuing, imminent threat to
Americans, and when certain other preconditions, including a requirement that no other
reasonable alternatives exist to effectively address the threat, are satisfied. And in all
circumstances there must be a legal basis for using force against the target. Significantly,
the President will soon be speaking publicly in greater detail about our counterterrorism
operations and the legal and policy framework that governs those actions.
I recognize that even after the Administration makes unprecedented disclosures
like those contained in this letter, some unanswered questions will remain. I assure you
that the President and his national security team are mindful of this Administration's
pledge to public accountability for our counterterrorism efforts, and we will continue to
give careful consideration to whether and how additional information may be declassified
and disclosed to the American people without harming our national security.
Sincerely,
Eric H. Holder, Jr.
Attorney General