UK complicity in US drone strikes is ‘inevitable’, Emmerson tells parliament

Published

December 5, 2013

Written by

Jack Serle

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Conflict experts told British lawmakers the UK is probably complicit in the secret drone war (Jim Trodel/Flickr)

It is ‘inevitable’ British spies are sharing intelligence with the US that is then used in drone strikes, a prominent UN expert told UK politicians yesterday.

Ben Emmerson QC, who is leading an ongoing drones investigation for the UN, and Professor Michael Clarke, director-general of military think-tank Rusi, told politicians there is little doubt the UK has given the US information used in drone strikes.

There’s a reasonable presumption that the provision of information or sharing of information makes us complicit – Professor Michael Clarke

The British government has consistently refused to confirm or deny whether its spies have passed information to the US that has been used to target drone strikes in covert campaigns such as Pakistan and Yemen.

But Emmerson said that the UK and US intelligence relationship is so close that this type of information-sharing is ‘inevitable’. He added: ‘It would be absurd if it were not the case.’

UK drones have only been used to launch missiles where there is a declared war, Clarke said. According to the Bureau’s estimate the US has launched over 430 covert drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia – beyond declared war zones such as Afghanistan.

‘The integration of information operations and sharing means that of course we share information,’ Clarke said. ‘It would be very hard to say that the information that we share about people of interest isn’t used for a drone strike.’

He added: ‘There’s a reasonable presumption that the provision of information or sharing of information makes us complicit in an American policy.’

He warned the issue is ‘coming down the track with increasing force’.

Emmerson and Clarke spoke to members of both Houses of Parliament at an event organised by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Drones and the APPG on the UN.

Related story: Consensus grows among UN states for greater transparency on drone civilian deaths

A Pakistani tribesman is currently challenging the UK’s silence on its alleged complicity in the CIA’s lethal drone campaign in Pakistan. Noor Khan’s father was one of as many as 40 civilians killed in a CIA strike in March 2011. His lawyers claim British spies who share intelligence with their CIA counterparts could be complicit in murder or war crimes if that information is used to target drone strikes.

The UK High Court rejected the case in 2012 saying that it could ‘imperil international relations‘. But as the Bureau reported yesterday, Khan is appealing and the latest stage of this unprecedented legal challenge is now before the Court of Appeal.

Canada, New Zealand and Australia also have close intelligence sharing relationships with the US. These countries with the US and UK make up the so-called Five Eyes, an alliance of Anglophone countries established after the second world war.

It emerged this summer that Australia’s Pine Gap spy base has provided the US with the intelligence across the eastern hemisphere. It has intercepted radio transmissions from Pakistan and used the intelligence to fix the location of suspects, feeding this information into the CIA drone programme, according to the reports.

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November 2013 Update: US covert actions in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia

Published

December 3, 2013

Written by

Alice Ross and Jack Serle

Web link

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

CIA drones destroyed part of a madrassa in Hangu district – the first strike outside Pakistan’s tribal areas. (Reuters/Syed Shah)

CIA drones kill one of the most senior militants in Pakistan.

The first reported airstrikes in Yemen in three months kill alleged foreign fighters.

More African peacekeepers will go to Somalia as al Shabaab remains a threat to security.

Eighteen people killed by CIA drones are added to Naming the Dead.

Pakistan

November 2013 actions

Total CIA strikes in November: 3

Total killed in strikes in November: 11-19, of whom 0 were reportedly civilians

All actions 2004 – November 30 2013

Total Obama strikes: 329

Total US strikes since 2004: 380

Total reported killed: 2,534-3,642

Civilians reported killed: 416-951

Children reported killed: 168-200

Total reported injured: 1,127-1,556For the Bureau’s full Pakistan databases click here.

Three CIA drone strikes hit Pakistan, killing at least 11 people including the leader of the Pakistan Taliban (TTP) and several alleged senior Haqqani Network members. The attacks sparked popular protests and condemnation from the government and political parties.

On November 1 (Ob327) the US killed Hakimullah Mehsud, leader of the Pakistan Taliban (TTP). Islamabad said it had started peace talks with the TTP and this strike had snuffed out any chance of a negotiated settlement. However an official TTP spokesman denied the group had had any contact with the government.

Mullah Fazlullah was elected to lead the TTP after Mehsud’s death. As the leader of the Swat Taliban, he ordered the shooting of schoolgirl activist Malala Yousfuzai. He is nicknamed Mullah Radio, for his diatribes broadcast on illegal FM radio, and the Butcher of Swat, for the uncompromising way his forces dealt with dissent when his group occupied the region between 2007 and 2009. The group promised to avenge Mehsud’s death with a wave of attacks on the Pakisani state and security forces.

A second strike 20 days later (Ob328) killed at least six including Ahmad Jan – an alleged senior Haqqani Network commander – in the Hangu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province. It is believed to be the first time a strike has taken place in Pakistan’s ‘settled’ areas as all previous strikes have hit either Pakistan’s tribal regions or the frontier regions that act as a buffer zone between tribal and settled areas.

The opposition politician Imran Khan called on the government to block Nato supply routes in and out of Pakistan in protest. Khan’s party the PTI filed a First Incident Report at the local police station in Hangu. It claimed civilians were killed and injured in the attack – including four children. Six days after the strike it named two men as responsible for their ‘murder’: CIA director John Brennan and a man PTI said is the CIA station chief in Islamabad. A previous CIA station chief was forced to return to Washington in 2010 after being named in another legal complaint over drone strikes.

The CIA struck again on November 29 (Ob329) around a day after the PTI said it had outed Washington’s top spy in Pakistan. It killed 1-3 people and injured up to two more. Reports suggested the dead were members of the Punjabi Taliban. The News reported an alleged militant named Aslam (aka Yaseen) was injured in the attack. Aslam is allegedly connected to attacks on Pakistani military installations in Rawalpindi and Afghanistan.

November also saw the six-month anniversary of a major policy speech given by President Barack Obama in Washington on May 23. An analysis by the Bureau shows that there were fewer drone strikes in Pakistan in the six months after the speech compared to the previous six months – 13 between May and November 23, compared with 18 in the previous six months. But each strike killed more people on average.

This went against the trend of the last three years: the average number of people killed in each strike has been falling since 2009 when on average over 11 people were killed in every strike. In the six months before the speech, an average of 3.5 people were killed in each strike. Since the speech this has risen to almost five.

Yemen

November 2013 actions

Confirmed US drone strikes: 0 Further reported/possible US strike events: 2-3 Total reported killed in US operations: 15-17Civilians reported killed in US strikes: 0

All actions 2002 – November 30 2013*

Confirmed US drone strikes: 55-65

Total reported killed: 269-389Civilians reported killed: 21-56Children reported killed: 5Reported injured: 67-150

Possible extra US drone strikes: 83-102

Total reported killed: 302-481

Civilians reported killed: 23-48

Children reported killed: 6-9

Reported injured: 81-108

All other US covert operations: 12-77Total reported killed: 148-377Civilians reported killed: 60-88Children reported killed: 25-26Reported injured: 22-114Click here for the full Yemen data.

* All but one of these actions have taken place during Obama’s presidency. Reports of incidents in Yemen often conflate individual strikes. The range in the total strikes and total drone strikes we have recorded reflects this.

After a three-month pause, up to three possible drone attacks occurred in Yemen, but none can as yet be confirmed as US operations.

The first attack, on November 19, killed five alleged al Qaeda militants who were named as Abu Habib al Yemen, Yemeni; Abu Salma al Russi, Russian; Abu Suhaib al Australi, Australian; Wadhah al Hadhrami from Hadramout in Yemen; and Hamam al Masri, Egyptian. A Yemeni journalist told the Bureau these were nom de guerre, explaining that al Qaeda fighters take their names from the first name of their eldest son and their birthplace.

A single source reported a possible strike on November 20 in the same province, Hadramout. And the final strike of the month, on November 26, killed 12 alleged al Qaeda militants travelling in a car through the southern province of Abyan. Yemen’s government claimed responsibility for the strike. However as the Bureau has previously reported, the Yemen Air Force is incapable of a precision strike on a moving vehicle.

It emerged that the CIA knew it had killed a civilian in a strike in June, and the Agency had secretly briefed Congress on the death. The CIA destroyed a car on June 7; it later emerged that a child aged 6-13 was in the car. An investigation by McClatchy at the time of the attack had identified the child as Abdulaziz, the 10-year old brother of Hassan al-Saleh Huraydan, an alleged militant.

Abdulaziz was one of at least six civilian casualties in the six months since President Obama gave his set-piece speech in May. The President said the US only takes lethal action when it is almost certain there will be no civilians killed or injured.

A man whose civilian relatives were killed in a 2012 drone strike visited Washington. Faisal Ahmed bin Ali Jaber spoke at a Congressional briefing about a drone strike that killed his nephew Waleed Abdullah bin Ali Jaber, a policeman, and Salem Ahmed bin Ali Jaber, his brother-in-law an imam and outspoken critic of al Qaeda.

He said he had travelled to the US capital ‘to find out who was responsible for the deaths of Salem and Waleed, and I want to know if someone will be held accountable for their deaths’. Salem and Waleed were killed on August 29 2012. Three al Qaeda members had travelled to their village to remonstrate with Salem over an anti-al Qaeda sermon he had given. The five were talking when drones fired several missiles, killing them all.

Somalia

November 2013 actions

Total reported US operations: 0

All actions 2007 – November 30 2013

US drone strikes: 4-10Total reported killed: 9-30Civilians reported killed: 0-15Children reported killed: 0Reported injured: 2-24

All other US covert operations: 8-15Total reported killed: 48-150Civilians reported killed: 7-42Children reported killed: 1-3Reported injured: 13-21Click here for the Bureau’s full data on Somalia.

No US operations were reported in Somalia.

However there were reports of al Shabaab attacks. The militant group assaulted a police station near Mogadishu killing and wounding at least 23 people. Six Somali policemen and four Djiboutian peacekeepers were among the dead.

The Guardian reported that after a turbulent period of infighting the militant group is rebuilding its strength, while unnamed officials told the paper the African Union peacekeeping operation is stalling.

The UN and African Union have agreed to send in more troops to bolster the peacekeeping force, Amisom, by over 4,000 in the new year. More than 17,500 African Union troops are already on the ground fighting alongside the Somali security forces. A spokesman from the peacekeepers told the Bureau in December the force will review and renew its overall strategy, or Concept of Operations (ConOps), in Somalia.

There has been speculation that troops from neighbouring Ethiopia will be part of this surge. Ethiopia has had a sizeable force in Somalia off and on since 2007. However the two countries have a fractious history. The Amisom spokesman said during the ConOps review the countries already contributing troops – Uganda, Burundi, Djibouti, Sierra Leone and Kenya – would be asked to send in more soldiers. If they do not contribute more men then the numbers will be made up by other African Union members. However the spokesman did not know which other countries would be approached.

Naming the Dead

The Bureau has added 18 more names to the Naming the Dead database this month. Fifteen of these emerged in press and think tank reports of the three drone strikes in the month. The Bureau gained a further three names during a research trip to Pakistan in October 2013 (Ob113).

New case studies include those of five civilian chromite miners, and a profile of Ibne Amin, a commander in the Swat Taliban and former right-hand man of the TTP’s new leader, Mullah Fazlullah.

Follow Alice Ross and Jack Serle on Twitter.

New analysis questions constraint on US drone strikes

Published

November 26, 2013

Written by

Jack Serle

Web link

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Bureau analyses President Obama’s drone strike guidelines six months on from his speech setting out the rules. (Pete Souza/White House).

Six months after President Obama laid out US rules for using armed drones, a Bureau analysis shows that covert drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan have killed more people than in the six months before the speech.

Each drone strike kills more people on average in both countries. The number of strikes fell across the two countries in the six months after the speech compared with the six months before, yet the overall death toll increased.

‘To say a military tactic is legal, or even effective, is not to say it is wise or moral in every instance.’

– President Obama

This analysis will raise questions about how much Obama’s new rules constrain the drone programme, as he claimed it would in his speech.

On May 23 Obama explained how a new policy will govern the use of drones. He said using drones for targeted killing is legal, but added: ‘To say a military tactic is legal, or even effective, is not to say it is wise or moral in every instance.’

He said: ‘The same human progress that gives us the technology to strike half a world away also demands the discipline to constrain that power – or risk abusing it.’

The President’s remarks, and a background briefing to the media by unnamed administration officials, led some to report the US was ending the controversial practice of signature strikes – strikes which target groups of unidentified individuals based on their behaviour.

However in the weeks after the speech, analyst Micah Zenko wrote: ‘There is no evidence that signature strikes will be reduced or ended based upon anything the Obama administration has recently stated.’

The speech and briefings fuelled reports that the US military – in the form of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) – would soon be given responsibility for carrying out drone strikes outside Afghanistan.

But six months later the CIA is reportedly still carrying out strikes in Pakistan and Yemen. It was reported this week that the administration is trying to find a way to merge the CIA and Pentagon drone programmes.

According to the Washington Post the ambition is to allow the CIA to keep running a fleet of drones but put JSOC in charge of the final, lethal step in a strike sequence, known as the finish.

Get the data: Obama 2013 Pakistan drone strikes

Obama’s speech addressed ‘criticism about drone strikes’, saying the US only carries out such attacks against individuals who pose ‘a continuing and imminent threat’ to US citizens, not ‘to punish individuals’.

He added: ‘before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured – the highest standard we can set’.

Civilians have been killed in US strikes in the past, the President said. The day before the speech, Attorney General Eric Holder published a letter to Congress saying those killed included a 16-year-old US citizen, Abdulrahman al Awlaqi.

In Yemen, civilians have reportedly been killed in drone strikes after the speech. Between six and seven civilians were reported killed, two of whom were said to be children.

It also emerged this month that the US knew it had killed civilians in strikes after the speech. The LA Times reported that the CIA briefed Congress about civilian casualties, including a child aged 6-13 who had been riding in a car with his older brother, an alleged militant, when the drones attacked. The CIA reportedly did not know he was in the car at the time.

Other reports have identified the child as Abdulaziz, younger brother of Hassan al-Saleh Huraydan, an alleged AQAP commander.

Every confirmed US drone strike in the past six months came in a 15-day period in late July and August, when eight attacks took place.

The bombardment was more intense than any period in Yemen since mid-2012 when the US was providing air support to Yemeni forces as they fought an al Qaeda insurgency. The group established its own ‘Islamic emirate‘ in several towns and villages in southern Yemen, exploiting a security vacuum during popular unrest in 2011.

Although other aerial attacks have been reported it is not clear whether they were carried out by drones or manned aircraft.

The 2013 onslaught of strikes was a response to a perceived terror threat the US reportedly believed was coming from Yemen. Washington reacted to intelligence of an impending attack by closing over 20 embassies and consulates in Africa and the Middle East and launching a barrage of drone strikes.

The attacks killed at least 29 people, many of them identified as al Qaeda members. But only three of them were described in reports as significant leaders in the group.

Against the prevailing trend

There were fewer drone strikes in Pakistan in the six months after May 23 compared to the previous six months – 13 between May and the present, compared with 18 in the previous six months. But each strike killed more people on average.

This went against the prevailing trend: the average number of people killed in each strike has been falling since 2009 when over 11 people were killed on average in every strike. That was down to fewer than five people killed on average in each attack at the end of 2012. In the six months before the speech, an average of 3.5 people were killed in each strike. Since the speech this has risen to almost five.

There were no confirmed reports of civilian deaths in the six months after the speech. However this could be a continuing trend rather than a direct consequence of the speech. Total civilian casualties have been falling since 2009, and the average number of civilian deaths in each strike has also been declining over the past four years.

The attacks in Pakistan have killed some named high-profile members of the Haqqani Network and Pakistan Taliban, the TTP.

Hakimullah Mehsud, leader of the Pakistan Taliban, was the most high-profile target in the past six months. A CIA drone killed him on November 1. He became leader in 2009 when his predecessor, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed by US drones. Following this attack, Hakimullah sent a suicide bomber to attack a CIA base in Khost, on the border in Afghanistan.

The attack killed seven CIA officers. He had been wrongly reported to have been killed on at least three previous occasions.

Since Obama’s speech, drones have also killed both Mullah Sangeen Zadran, the Taliban shadow governor of Paktika province in Afghanistan, and Ahmad Jan, the shadow finance minster in Paktika, both of the Haqqani Network.

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The Bureau launches drones podcast

Published

November 15, 2013

Written by

The Bureau

Web link

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Bureau is launching a podcast that will provide regular comment and interviews on the covert drone war.

We will be producing a podcast every fortnight as part of our extensive coverage of the US’s secret drone campaign in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

Each package will include a report from Alice Ross, who leads the Bureau’s investigation into drone warfare, with analysis on recent drone-related news and events. There will also be interviews.

In the first of these podcasts Alice Ross talks about the Bureau’s investigations into the covert drone war, including the Naming the Dead project.

Jack Serle, who runs the Bureau’s extensive drones databases, discusses how the Bureau goes about assembling its data.

The Bureau has been covering the use of drones in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia for more than two years. Data collected by the team forms a public record of every reported drone strike in these regions along with the numbers of reported casualties of such attacks.

The drones team was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism this year, with the head of the judges John Pilger praising the project as ‘pioneering’ and ‘truly extraordinary’.

Related story: Get the data – Drone wars

In September the Bureau launched Naming the Dead, in an attempt to increase the public understanding of how drones are being used in the remote tribal areas of Pakistan, by naming people who have been killed in strikes in this area.

All the Bureau’s work on the covert drone war can be viewed on the Covert Drone War project site.

You can subscribe to the Bureau’s podcast through iTunes. Or you can stream it or download from here.

To keep up-to-date with our work subscribe to our drones investigation mailing list or follow us on Twitter at @tbij, @aliceross and @jackserle.

October 2013 Update: US covert actions in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia

Published

November 2, 2013

Written by

Jack Serle

Web link

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Relatives hold photographs of victims of a January drone strike (Letta Tayler/Human Rights Watch).

A single strike kills up to five in Pakistan, at the end of a month of sharp criticism of the US drone war.

There are no reported drone attacks in Yemen for the second month running.

The US military attacks Somalia twice, the first strikes in almost two years.

The Bureau’s Naming the Dead project identifies more than 600 people killed by drones.

Pakistan

October 2013 actions

Total CIA strikes in October: 1

Total killed in strikes in October: 0-5, of whom 0 were reportedly civilians

All actions 2004 – October 31 2013

Total Obama strikes: 326

Total US strikes since 2004: 377

Total reported killed: 2,523-3,621

Civilians reported killed: 416-948

Children reported killed: 168-200

Total reported injured: 1,123-1,543For the Bureau’s full Pakistan databases click here.

There was only one drone attack in October, breaking 31 days of no strikes. The attack in the early morning on October 31 reportedly killed up to five people.

But while there was only one drone attack, the media was full of reports about the drone war in Pakistan.

In October, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met with President Obama, and asked him to end drone strikes. Two UN reports criticising the secret campaign in Yemen as well as Pakistan were presented to the UN in New York. And the family of 65-year old midwife Bibi Mamana travelled to Washington to speak to lawmakers. The event was the first time Congress had heard from relatives of drone strike victims.

In the first report to the UN, Special Rapporteur, Christof Heyns called for greater transparency around the use of armed drones. He also warned against ‘wide and permissive interpretations’ of international law to justify lethal strikes. The second report by Ben Emmerson called on the US to ‘release its own data on the level of civilian casualties’ and also criticised the lack of transparency around the secret drone programme.

Key members of the UN endorsed these calls for greater transparency. Pakistan, Russia and China were joined by the European Union, Switzerland, and key US ally the UK in calling for more openness. The US defended itself before the UN, saying drone strikes are ‘necessary, legal and just‘.

Also this month, international rights group Amnesty International published a field investigation into drone strikes in Pakistan. The report also stressed the need for more transparency around drone attacks, particularly in relation to the victims killed. The report said the lack of disclosure means that victims cannot access justice or compensation.

Pakistan’s Ministry of Defence released summary statistics on the US drone war in the country’s tribal agencies. According to the new Pakistan strike data 67 civilians and 2,160 militants have been killed in 317 drone strikes from 2008 onwards. The Bureau’s estimates show at least 308 civilians have been killed in 365 strikes since 2008.

This was the fourth time the Pakistan government has released drone strike data. In April the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Emmerson at least 400 civilians have been killed by drones since 2004. Emmerson told the New York Times he would be writing to the Pakistan government to clarify the disparity. In May the Peshawar High Court published summary statistics of data collected by the tribal administration saying 896 civilians had been killed by drone attacks between 2007 and 2012. In July the Bureau published Pakistan’s secret internal assessment of 75 drone strikes from between 2006 and 2009. The document showed that 147 of 746 people were civilians.

Yemen

October 2013 actions

Confirmed US drone strikes: 0 Further reported/possible US strike events: 0 Total reported killed in US operations: 0Civilians reported killed in US strikes: 0

All actions 2002 – October 31 2013*

Confirmed US drone strikes: 54-64

Total reported killed: 268-397Civilians reported killed: 21-58Children reported killed: 5Reported injured: 65-147

Possible extra US drone strikes: 82-101

Total reported killed: 289-467

Civilians reported killed: 23-48

Children reported killed: 6-9

Reported injured: 83-109

All other US covert operations: 12-77Total reported killed: 148-380Civilians reported killed: 60-88Children reported killed: 24-26Reported injured: 22-111Click here for the full Yemen data.

For the second month there were no reported strikes in Yemen.

Reports by two international human rights organisations scrutinised US attacks in the country. Geneva-based Alkarama and New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) analysed 11 US operations between them, covering the period from 2009 to 2013. Both groups looked into five of the same strikes independently of each other. Alkarama looked at five more strikes that were not covered by HRW. And the US organisation scrutinised a sixth strike not investigated by Alkarama.

Alkarama researchers spoke with relatives, witnesses and survivors to build a comprehensive analysis of the events around each strike. The report said it was unclear if strikes in Yemen are carried out under ‘the rules of war, or law enforcement’. The US ‘plays on the confusion between’ the two, it added. Alkarama concluded that the strikes are extrajudicial executions, regardless of which set of international laws are applied.

HRW researchers analysed six strikes in detail, scrutinising evidence from the scenes and speaking with witnesses, survivors and Yemeni government officials. They concluded that two of the strikes violated the laws of war because they did not distinguish between civilians and combatants, or used indiscriminate weapons. The four other strikes were considered possibly unlawful because they caused disproportionate civilian casualties, or attacked an unlawful military target. However, the report said further information would be needed to draw more concrete conclusions.

Somalia

October 2013 actions

Total reported US operations: 2

All actions 2007 – October 31 2013

US drone strikes: 4-10Total reported killed: 9-30Civilians reported killed: 0-15Children reported killed: 0Reported injured: 2-24

All other US covert operations: 8-15Total reported killed: 48-150Civilians reported killed: 7-42Children reported killed: 1-3Reported injured: 13-21Click here for the Bureau’s full data on Somalia.

The US military launched two attacks on al Shabaab in southern Somalia this month. They are the first confirmed US operations for 20 months. Anonymous US officials said both were carried out by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).

The first JSOC raid on October 5 was a widely reported amphibious assault. US Navy Seals attacked a reportedly well fortified house on the coast in Baraawe, a town around 120km (75 miles) south of the capital Mogadishu. It was a bid to snatch Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdulkadir (aka Ikrima), a senior militant and leader of attacks on Kenyans in 2011 and 2012. The Seals met fiercer resistance than expected and withdrew without their target.

The second operation on October 28 was a JSOC drone strike. It targeted and killed Ibrahim Ali Abdi (aka Anta Anta), a senior al Shabaab commander and bomb maker. Abdi’s ‘friend’ Abu Ali also died in the strike, which hit a Suzuki car travelling from the town of Jillib to Baarawe. Somali Interior Minister Abdikarim Hussein Guled said Somali security services provided the US with intelligence for the attack.

Also in October, the UN-backed African Union peacekeepers reportedly began an offensive against al Shabaab positions. Kenyan forces led the fresh assault with airstrikes in what Reuters reported was retaliation for the bloody Westgate mall terrorist attack in Kenya.

Naming the Dead

The Bureau’s Naming the Dead project has named 613 people killed in drone strikes in Pakistan. Naming the Dead is a new project from the Bureau that aims to identify people killed by US drones in Pakistan.

This month the Bureau published the names of 20 previously unidentified people collected during a recent field investigation. On March 12 2009 (Ob6) multiple missiles hit a house in Kurram province, killing up to 26 people and injuring scores more. A local politician told the Bureau the dead were Taliban although he said some of them were children. The Bureau has discovered the ages of only three of the dead, a child and two adults.

Bureau researchers in Pakistan have also discovered the names of two children killed in the first strike in Pakistan, on June 17 2004 (B1). Amnesty International independently published different names for the two children. Amnesty also reported the names of 18 civilians killed in a 2012 follow-up strike (Ob281). Eight different names had already been independently reported by legal charity Reprieve. This highlights the challenge of reconciling different reports from drone strike witnesses and victims’ relatives. Amnesty also this month reported two named Taliban, killed in a May 2012 strike (Ob270).

Follow Alice Ross and Jack Serle on Twitter.

To sign up for monthly updates from the Bureau’s Covert War project click here.

Consensus grows among UN states for greater transparency on drone civilian deaths

Published

October 26, 2013

Written by

Chris Woods

Web link

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

UN members call for greater transparency (Image: Chris Woods)

Key members of the United Nations – including some of Washington’s closest allies – broke with a decade of tradition on Friday when they endorsed calls for greater transparency over drone civilian deaths.

The European Union, the United Kingdom and Switzerland were joined by the Russian Federation and China in calling for greater openness from those carrying out drone strikes. Pakistan was particularly strident, insisting that there was ‘no implicit or explicit consent’ for US drone strikes on its territory, which it insists have a ‘disastrous humanitarian impact.’ In previous debates states had refused to support similar calls for greater transparency.

The nations were responding to a pair of reports delivered to a busy session of the General Assembly in New York by special rapporteurs Ben Emmerson QC and Professor Christof Heyns. The studies, announced a year ago in London, are part of an ongoing UN investigation into the legal and ethical problems posed by the use of armed drones – especially in non-conventional conflicts.

The United States, one of only three nations which presently uses armed drones, also indicated that it will continue to co-operate with the UN’s inquiry. So too did the UK. Only Israel – which has suspended its involvement with the UN’s Human Rights Council – has so far failed to engage.

Heyns, as UN special rapporteur for extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, stressed that existing international law should be sufficient to provide an adequate framework for managing strikes: ‘The drone should follow the law, not the law follow the drone,’ he told member nations.

The issue was not the law but how drones were sometimes used, Heyns said: ‘Armed drones are not illegal, but as lethal weapons they may be easily abused and lead to unlawful loss of life, if used inappropriately.

‘States must be transparent about the development, acquisition and use of armed drones. They must publicly disclose the legal basis for the use of drones, operational responsibility, criteria for targeting, impact (including civilian casualties), and information about alleged violations, investigations and prosecutions,’ his report notes.

Brandon Bryrant, former USAF pilot (photo: Chris Woods)

The South African professor of law also expressed concern that an increased reliance on drone strikes by nations risked a decreased emphasis on diplomacy, and on law and order operations.

Heyns once again raised the issue of possible war crimes in relation to the deliberate targeting of civilians with drones, saying there was an ‘obligation’ on member states to investigate such instances.

That appeared to be a reference to the now well-reported US practice of deliberately targeting first responders at the scene of an original drone attack. Earlier this week, Amnesty International became the latest organisation to produce evidence of so-called ‘double-tap’ strikes in Pakistan. Findings of similar attacks have been reported by the Bureau, by legal charityReprieve and by Stanford and New York university law schools.

Interim study

In his own report to the UN, British barrister Ben Emmerson –the rapporteur for counter terrorism and human rights -repeatedly emphasised what he described as the obligation of states to properly investigate credible reports of civilian deaths.

‘The single greatest obstacle to an evaluation of the civilian impact of drone strikes is lack of transparency, he said. ‘In any case in which civilians have been, or appear to have been killed, the State responsible is under an obligation to conduct a prompt, independent and impartial fact-finding inquiry and to provide a detailed public explanation.’ It was that call for transparency which other member states then endorsed.

Emmerson was also keen to stress that his study is interim. A team of legal investigators based in London has also been examining 33 problematic drone strikes carried out by the United States, Israel and the UK, which raise significant concerns regarding legality, civilian deaths or possible war crimes. As Emmerson told a later press conference: ‘The really difficult part of the process is this next stage,’ when the three countries will be asked to comment in detail on individual strikes. That final report is expected in 2014.

Responding in the General Assembly to Heyns’ report and comments, the US was careful not to imply that it accepted any definition of its own drone strikes as ‘extrajudicial killings’, actions it condemned outright. However, the US surprised some observers by indicating that it intends to continue co-operation with Emmerson’s ongoing investigation.

Constitutional rights

The two rapporteurs also spoke at a panel discussion at the UN’s Manhattan building. They were joined by a former US drone operator, along with academics and human rights investigators. A short film, prepared by Forensic Architects, showed in Emmerson’s words ‘an indication of the potential to mount investigations’ into problematic strikes. ‘With enough effort and political will it can be done,’ he insisted. ‘I refuse to give up trying to obtain that co-operation.’

In a late addition to the panel, former US Air Force drone operator Brandon Bryant also endorsed calls for drone strike transparency and accountability. He said that his own misgivings about some US actions came about after he was ‘party to the violation of the constitutional rights of a US citizen.’ This, he said, was despite his having sworn an oath to uphold the same Constitution when he joined the military.

Friday’s UN presentations came at the end of a week of reports covering aspects of the ongoing secret US drone war. After the weekend release of a major study into Yemen drone strikes by Swiss NGO Alkarama, both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch followed with their own damning reports into recent US drone axctivity in Yemen and Pakistan. In a testy response a State Department official insisted that US civilian casualties from drones were ‘much lower,’ but refused to provide either estimates or evidence to back her claims.

On Wednesday, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif also told President Obama on a visit to Washington DC that drone strikes on his country had to stop. The impact of that call was muted by a leaked story in the Washington Post later that day, insinuating that Pakistan may still give its tacit consent to US drone strikes. In contrast Emmerson’s UN report states that whilst there is ‘strong evidence’ that Pakistan previously allowed US strikes on its territory, any such consent had been removed by April 2012 at the latest.

He also insisted that any side-deals cut between the US and Pakistan’s military or intelligence services had no validity:‘The democratically elected Government is the body responsible for Pakistani international relations and the sole entity able to express the will of the State in its international affairs,’ Emmerson writes.

Although Friday’s UN presentations appeared to make a reasonable impact, this was not the first time that the General Assembly had debated the issue of drone strikes. In 2010 former UN special rapporteur Philip Alston also presented a report to the UN, and some of his recommendations are being repeated by Emmerson and Heyns.

There is now more acknowledgement of the need for debate and transparency, the current rapporteurs believe.

Heyns said he believed that nations are now ready to ‘take stock’ of the use of armed drones, particularly given the potential for their proliferation. And noting that the European Union and others have now explicitly lined up behind calls for transparency, Ben Emmerson said that there was a far deeper public awareness of the impact of armed drones.

He also noted that alongside Washington’s co-operation with the investigation to date, CIA director John Brennan has indicated he would like to see US civilian drone casualty data published. ‘I am optimistic, and refuse to limit my expectations,’ Emmerson told assembled journalists.

Chris Woods is a freelance investigative reporter whose work with the Bureau on US covert drone strikes recently won the prestigious Martha Gellhorn Prize. His book on the pivotal role of armed drones in the War on Terror, Sudden Justice, is published next year.

Human rights groups say civilian drone deaths violate international law

Published

October 22, 2013

Written by

Rachel Oldroyd

Web link

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Rafeequl Rehman and his children showing a picture of Mamana Bibi, killed by a drone in Pakistan. (Image: Amnesty International)

Leading human rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have raised serious concerns about the legality of drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen.

The two organisations have conducted separate investigations into specific strikes to highlight how civilians are being killed. Such killings, they claim, are a violation of international law.

The groups say the US must investigate all drone attacks that kill civilians and those responsible for such ‘unlawful killings’ should be disciplined or prosecuted.

The reports follow calls last week by two UN experts for more disclosure of information about drone deaths.

A report by Christof Heyns, the special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, called for nations that operate armed drones to be more transparent and ‘publicly disclose’ how they use them.

This was followed by the findings of Ben Emmerson, a British barrister and UN special rapporteur on counter-terrorism, who urged the US to ‘release its own data on the level of civilian casualties’ caused by drone strikes.

Amnesty’s report focuses on drone strikes in Pakistan. Human Rights Watch has concentrated on airstrikes, including those conducted by drones, in Yemen.

The Amnesty report, Will I be next? US drone strikes in Pakistan, names a group of 18 labourers, including a 14-year-old boy, killed in a drone attack on Pakistan in July 2012. This is the first time that all victims of the strike have been identified.

The group of men had been gathered for their evening meal when the first strike hit. In July field research by the Bureau found that this strike was then followed by another attack that killed rescuers trying to retrieve bodies. This was confirmed by Amnesty’s research.

The report states: ‘Amnesty International has serious concerns that this attack violated the prohibition of the arbitrary deprivation of life and may constitute war crimes or extrajudicial executions.’

Over nine months Amnesty researchers reviewed 45 incidents from the past 18 months in North Waziristan, the area hit most frequently by recent CIA-operated drone strikes. As well as the attack on the group of labourers the report also points to another drone strike in October 2012 which killed a 68-year-old grandmother who was looking after her grandchildren. The death of Mamana Bibi in this attack had already been highlighted by the Bureau’s Naming the Dead project, which records all named casualties of US drone strikes in Pakistan. ‘Bibi’ means ‘grandmother’ in Urdu and Pashtun, and much of the earlier reporting on this case refers to her as ‘Bibi Mamana’.

Related story: Bibi Mamana

Amnesty researchers spoke to Pakistani intelligence sources who said that a local Taliban fighter had used a satellite phone on a road close to where Mamana Bibi was killed about 10 minutes before the strike. The sources said they were not aware of the reason for the old woman’s killing but assumed it was related to the Taliban fighter’s proximity to her.

However Amnesty found no other evidence of militants in the area at the time of the attack, and the site of the drone strike was nearly 1,000ft away from the nearest road.

Mustafa Qadri, who led the research said: ‘We cannot find any justification for these killings. There are genuine threats to the USA and its allies in the region, and drone strikes may be lawful in some circumstances. But it is hard to believe that a group of labourers, or an elderly woman surrounded by her grandchildren, were endangering anyone at all, let alone posing an imminent threat to the United States.’

The Human Rights Watch report, Between a Drone and Al-Qaeda, looks at attacks in Yemen and similarly highlights incidents where civilians were killed. It looks at six strikes that together killed 82 people, including at least 57 civilians.

The strikes investigated included a a drone-assisted airstrike on a passenger van which killed 12 civilians. Human Rights Watch spoke to 23-year-old Ahmad al-Sabooli, whose father, mother and 10-year-old sister was killed.

A demand for transparencyThe reports stress the need for more transparency around drone attacks, particularly in relation to the victims killed.

Amnesty’s call for transparency focuses on the difficulties faced by the families of drone victims in getting compensation. The report argues that the lack of disclosure about drone strikes means that victims are able to access neither justice nor recompense.

‘Secrecy surrounding the drones program gives the US administration a license to kill beyond the reach of the courts or basic standards of international law… What hope for redress can there be for victims of the drone attacks and their families when the USA won’t even acknowledge its responsibility for particular strikes?’ the report asks.

More than a year after the death of the grandmother Mamana Bibi, for example, her family has not received any acknowledgement that she was killed by a US drone, let alone any compensation, says Amnesty.

The human rights group also expresses concern that the Pakistan government is failing to protect and enforce the rights of victims of drone strikes. It says: ‘Pakistan has a duty to independently and impartially investigate all drone strikes in the country and ensure access to justice and reparation for victims of violations.’

A question of names

The Amnesty report highlights some of the problems faced by researchers reporting on casualties of drone strikes in Pakistan.

Amnesty International names 18 labourers whom its field researchers found were killed in a drone strike in Pakistan on July 6 2012. Previous research by legal campaign group Reprieve had already named eight of the 18 people reported to have died in this strike.

However the two organisations have been independently given different names by people they spoke to in Pakistan. Only the 14-year-old identified as Saleh Khan is named by both Reprieve and Amnesty.

Furthermore independent research by the Bureau found that those killed included alleged militants and ‘local tribesmen’, although it did not find specific claims of civilian casualties.

Amnesty’s Qadri told the Bureau: ‘Our research is based on eye witness testimony. The people we spoke to knew the people who were killed.

‘We have done the best we can. The authorities both in Pakistan and the US need to now show us what they know.’

The Bureau’s Naming the Dead project, launched last month, aims to record the names of casualties of the CIA drone campaign in Pakistan in an attempt to bring more transparency to this under-reported conflict. The data is regularly updated, even when there is confusion, or more than one name provided.

The Bureau’s data suggests at least 2,500 people have died in these attacks including more than 400 civilians, and yet only one in five of the casualties can so far be identified.

US must release data on civilian drone casualties, says UN report

Published

October 18, 2013

Written by

Alice Ross

Web link

This page is archived from original Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporting on US military actions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Emmerson: Drones operate in an ‘accountability vacuum’ (Photo: United Nations)

A report by a UN expert urges the US to ‘release its own data on the level of civilian casualties’ caused by drone strikes and attacks the lack of transparency surrounding CIA and US special forces drone operations.

Ben Emmerson, a British barrister and UN special rapporteur on counter-terrorism, has released the second of two major UN reports in a week to examine the use of drones both in conflict zones and in covert settings.

In the earlier report, Christof Heyns also called for increased transparency around the use of drones. In the new report Emmerson emphasises that this is a vital step to ensuring accountability and redress for the civilian victims of drone strikes.

‘The Special Rapporteur does not accept that considerations of national security justify withholding statistical and basic methodological data’– Ben Emmerson

Emmerson says: ‘The single greatest obstacle to an evaluation of the civilian impact of drone strikes is lack of transparency, which makes it extremely difficult to assess claims of precision targeting objectively.’

Related story – UN expert calls for increased transparency over armed drones

The report says the involvement of the CIA in drone operations has created an ‘almost insurmountable obstacle to transparency’, and he is also critical of the ‘almost invariably classified’ nature of special forces drone operations in Yemen and Somalia. ‘The Special Rapporteur does not accept that considerations of national security justify withholding statistical and basic methodological data.’

Drones currently operate in an ‘accountability vacuum’, Emmerson says, adding that there is a legal obligation on states to launch a full investigation into claims from ‘any plausible source’ of civilian casualties – including those made by non-governmental organisations. The results of such investigations should be made public, ‘subject to redactions on grounds of national security’, he adds.

He notes that the current director of the CIA John Brennan has called for the release of data relating to civilian casualties. The US government is in the process of moving its drone operations from the CIA to the Department of Defense to improve transparency, he says, adding that he understands this is due to be completed ‘by the end of 2014’.

The report highlights ‘differences of view’ over who should be considered a civilian in situations where non-uniformed fighters live and operate among the civilian population. He points to ‘considerable uncertainty’ over the criteria used to identify individuals as legitimate targets and calls for further clarification.

Emmerson examines US, British and Israeli drone operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Libya and Gaza.

‘Only in the most exceptional of circumstances would it be permissible under international human rights law for killing to be the sole or primary objective of an operation’– Ben Emmerson

The Pakistani government released data to Emmerson showing at least 400 civilian casualties – a number close to the Bureau’s lower-end estimate – and a further 200 were ‘regarded as probable non-combatants’. Emmerson wrote ‘those figures were likely to be an underestimate’ according to local officials. He told MSNBC there is no reason ‘on the face of it’ to question this data as it echoed independent estimates.

For Yemen drone operations, the report cites the Bureau’s estimate of 21-58 civilian casualties as the highest such figures. But the report does not provide estimates for drone operations in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Somalia or Gaza, pointing to a lack of official figures specifically covering civilians killed in drone strikes.

Kat Craig, Legal Director of the human rights charity Reprieve, which represents civilian victims of drone strikes, said: ‘This report highlights the US’ failure to reveal any information whatsoever about their shadowy, covert drone programme. Hiding the reality of civilian deaths is not only morally abhorrent but an affront to the sort of transparency that should be the hallmark of any democratic government. Some basic accountability is the very least people in Pakistan and Yemen should expect from the CIA as it rains down Hellfire missiles on their homes and villages.’

Related story – Pakistan government says ‘at least 400’ civilians killed in drone strikes

Emmerson also addresses the legality of drone strikes outside of military conflict areas, saying that where no official conflict exists lethal action will ‘rarely be lawful… because only in the most exceptional of circumstances would it be permissible under international human rights law for killing to be the sole or primary objective of an operation’.

The US claims it can legally carry out such lethal operations – but Emmerson says this ‘gives rise to a number of issues on which there is either no clear international consensus, or United States policy appears to challenge established norms’. The US has claimed that it carries out drone strikes in countries including Pakistan and Yemen in legitimate self-defence against imminent threats and that it is in a state of continuing war against al Qaeda and associated groups.

The report recommends that a clear international legal consensus is reached and Emmerson is currently consulting states with a view to ‘clarifying their position on these questions’.

He writes that he has identified 33 strikes that appear to have led to civilian casualties and ‘undoubtedly raise issues of accountability and transparency’. The full findings on these strikes will be published at a later stage.

A White House spokeswoman, Laura Magnuson, said: ‘We are aware that this report has been released and are reviewing it carefully.’

The reports by Heyns and Emmerson will be presented to the UN General Assembly in New York next week. Also next week on October 22 Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch will publish reports on drone operations in Pakistan and Yemen respectively.

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