Aerial Attack Kills A Red Cross Worker In Yemen As Obama Denies Drone Program Exists

Business Insider
Michael Kelley

A worker for the international Red Cross was killed by a bomb dropped from the sky on Tuesday while undertaking humanitarian work in the Abyan province of Yemen, BBC reports.

The death raises the issue that the U.S. offensive in Yemen and specifically its drone program — the existence of which the Obama Administration is currently denying in court — is killing innocent civilians because President Obama's "kill list" considers "all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants ... unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent."

Hussein Saleh, a 35-year-old Yemeni who was expecting his fifth child with his wife, was killed while assessing the humanitarian situation in Abyan (which has been severely affected by recent fighting).
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) stated it was "deeply shocked and dismayed" by the death of Mr. Saleh and a Red Cross spokeswoman said that they were unsure whether it had come from Yemeni forces or a drone attack.

A local official told Reuters that the Yemeni air force had conducted the strike, but as Al-Akhbar English notes, "Yemeni officials often claim to carry out airstrikes that are actually conducted by the U.S. to shield Washington from blame."

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) points out that "precision night-time strikes on moving vehicles, whilst often attributed to the Yemen Air Force, are more likely to be the work of U.S. forces."
Meanwhile the Guardian reports that the Obama administration is currently attempting to block the release of documents related to its use of drones, claiming that releasing information would hurt national security while denying that the secretive program of targeted killing exists.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the New York Times both submitted freedom of information (FOIA) requests to the Department of Justice, CIA and Pentagon seeking information about the program and now have gone to court to try and force the government to release details of its activities.

From the Guardian:

"The notion that the CIA's targeted killing programme is still a secret is beyond absurd," said Jameel Jaffer, ACLU deputy legal director. "Senior officials [including President Obama] have discussed it, both on the record and off. They have taken credit for its putative successes, professed it to be legal, and dismissed concerns about civilian casualties."

The BIJ estimates that there have been 33-43 confirmed drone strikes in Yemen (with 54-64 strikes unconfirmed) that have reportedly killed 317-921 people, including 58-139 civilians (24 children).
The killing of a humanitarian worker is the first overt example of "explicit intelligence posthumously proving" that an innocent civilian has been killed.


ProPublica has an ongoing report titled "Obama Administration’s Drone Death Figures Don’t Add Up" in which they track the government's admissions of civilians deaths. They report that the government "believes there were zero or almost zero civilian deaths between the beginning of 2008 and August 2009" and "August 2010 and July 2011" despite 182 strikes during those time periods.

George W Bush should be prosecuted over torture, says human rights group

Guardian

Human Rights Watch claims Obama administration 'failing to act on evidence', and also names Cheney and Rumsfeld in report

A US human rights group has called on foreign governments to prosecute George W Bush and some of his senior officials for war crimes if the Obama administration fails to investigate a growing body of evidence against the former president over the use of torture.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Tuesday that the US authorities were legally obliged to investigate the top echelons of the Bush administration over crimes such as torture, abduction and other mistreatment of prisoners. It says that the former administration's legal team was part of the conspiracy in preparing opinions authorising abuses that they knew to have no standing in US or international law.

Besides Bush, HRW names his vice-president, Dick Cheney, the former defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and the ex-CIA director, George Tenet, as likely to be guilty of authorising torture and other crimes.

The group says that the investigation and prosecutions are required "if the US hopes to wipe away the stain of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo and reaffirm the primacy of the rule of law".

HRW acknowledges the broad allegations are not new but says they should be given fresh attention because of growing documentary evidence with the release of previously classified papers, admissions made in books by Bush and others, and from a leaked International Committee of the Red Cross report that details illegal practices by the former administration.

The author of the HRW report, Reed Brody, says the issue also deserves renewed scrutiny because the Obama administration has all but abandoned its obligations. "It's become abundantly clear that there is no longer any movement on the part of the Obama administration to live up to its responsibilities to investigate these cases when the evidence just keeps piling up. Just this year we have the different admissions by President Bush that he authorised waterboarding," he said.

HRW says Bush and his senior officials are open to prosecution under the 1996 War Crimes Act as well as for criminal conspiracy under federal law.

"There is enough strong evidence from the information made public over the past five years to not only suggest these officials authorised and oversaw widespread and serious violations of US and international law, but that they failed to act to stop mistreatment, or punish those responsible after they became aware of serious abuses," it said.

Among the accusations in the report are that Bush approved waterboarding, ordered the CIA secret detention programme and approved illegal abductions of individuals delivered to foreign countries for torture, known as renditions.

Undefeated, Gaza’s Freedom Flotillas Expand

Anti-War
Eva Bartlett

GAZA CITY — A gleaming new memorial towers in the center of Gaza City’s battered port. Flanked by flags of various nations whose citizens have sailed to the Gaza Strip to highlight the all-out siege on Gaza, the memorial’s inscription bears the names of the Turkish solidarity activists who died one year ago when Israeli commandoes firing machine guns air-dropped onto the Freedom Flotilla, killing nine and injuring over 50 of the civilians on board.

On the one-year anniversary of the illegal Israeli attack on and abduction of over 600 civilians on the Freedom Flotilla from international waters, Gaza’s harbor bustles with people and energy: they have come to mourn the dead and to herald the coming boats of Freedom Flotilla Two. Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya addresses the audience, thanking the Turkish activists and government for their continued solidarity with Palestine.

Since Free Gaza boats arrived in 2008 — the first blockade-breaking boats and first boats to dock at Gaza since Israel’s 1967 occupation of the Strip — the boat movement has grown exponentially. Free Gaza successfully docked in Gaza five times, with another four voyages violently thwarted by the Israeli navy.

The December 2008 sailing ended when an Israeli warship rammed a Free Gaza vessel carrying medical supplies, non-violent activists, surgeons and journalists. The February 2009 attempt ended with Israeli soldiers forcibly boarding the ship, beating and abducting the passengers from international waters. A June 2009 sailing was likewise forcibly halted by the Israeli navy, the passengers aboard abducted and deported.

The various vessels have carried non-violent activists, international television and newspaper journalists, European parliamentarians, Jews in solidarity with Palestine, including Holocaust survivors and Israeli activists and journalists, and even Palestinians unable to get out of Gaza for studies in universities abroad and those unable to enter Gaza to re-unite with family.

Israel’s pretext in blocking boats’ passage to and from Gaza is for security reasons, claiming weapons are being smuggled into Gaza. In each instance when a Free Gaza or Flotilla vessel has been forcibly absconded to Israel, only humanitarian supplies were found aboard. Rather than defeating the boat movement, Israel’s aggressions have had the opposite effect.

Vessels from Libya, Malaysia, and a boat carrying Jewish activists have all sailed for, and been blocked by Israeli gunboats from, the Gaza Strip. Two weeks ago, Israeli soldiers fired upon a Malaysian aid ship carrying piping for a sanitation project in Gaza, forcing it to dock in Egyptian waters.

In May 2010, Free Gaza, supported by Turkish humanitarian organization IHH, again sent vessels and activists sailing to the besieged Strip, this time accompanied by the massive Turkish ship the Mavi Marmara. As the six vessels with over 600 passengers in the Freedom Flotilla approached Gaza, Israeli commandoes unleashed a barrage of machinegun fire on the boats still sailing in international waters. Equipped with satellite streaming, the Israeli assault was videoed and broadcast to disbelieving viewers in Gaza and worldwide.

Keven Niesh, 53, a Canadian activist on board the Mavi Marmara, described the killings. "There were several guys who had two neat bullet holes side by side on the side of their head — clearly they were executed," Niesh told CounterPunch in an interview after the Flotilla massacre last year.
Undaunted by last year’s massacre, international activists have organized the Freedom Flotilla 2, due to sail in one month’s time with at least 10 boats and over 1,000 activists. Canadian and US boats will join those of Europe, Turkey, and other nations.

Immediately following the massacre one year ago, Egyptian authorities partially opened the Rafah crossing. In an effort to deflect criticism, Israeli authorities subsequently announced they would ease the siege on Gaza. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)’s Mathilde De Riedmatten, in a May 2011 interview, noted that "the entry of goods into Gaza is also still highly restricted, not only in terms of quantity but also in terms of the particular items allowed."

More recently, Egyptian authorities announced the continued opening of the Rafah crossing. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), however, notes that this change will not impact on imports, exports or Gaza’s economy. "These procedures will not ease the suffering of the Palestinian civilian population or change the economic situation caused by the strict closure imposed on the Gaza Strip," a PCHR statement reads.

It calls for "lifting the Israeli closure imposed on the Gaza Strip, opening the crossings for commercial transactions and allowing the freedom of movement of persons, including the movement between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, through the outlets that are controlled by the Israeli occupation forces."
The siege on Gaza impacts drinking water (95 percent of Gazan water is below the World Health Organization standards), the sanitation system (untreated sewage is pumped into the sea daily for want of storage capabilities), and the agriculture and fishing sectors (farmers and fishermen are shot at on a daily basis by Israeli soldiers). Unemployment and malnutrition levels soar, power outages occur daily, impacting on hospital machinery, and Palestinians continue to live in what more and more outsiders are describing as an "open-air prison". Renowned classical pianist Anton Kuerti, endorsing the Canadian boat to Gaza, says the siege has rendered Gaza "indistinguishable from a concentration camp."

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon suggested nations prevent their citizens from sailing, saying governments should "use their influence to discourage such flotillas, which carry the potential to escalate into violent conflict."

Free Gaza’s attorney Audrey Bomse stated "the flotilla violates no international laws or laws of the sea and so an outright ban on our sailing to Gaza is essentially a statement against the rights of the Palestinian people to control their own ports and lives."

Turkey has demanded an apology and compensation from Israel to the martyred activists’ families, with Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on NTV television warning "Turkey will give the necessary response to any repeated act of provocation by Israel on the high seas."

As was Free Gaza’s goal, the expanded Flotilla aims to end the illegal siege on Gaza. The Canadian Boat to Gaza (CBG) will "challenge Canadian foreign policy and the uncritical support of Israeli war crimes by the current government."

CBG’s David Heap says the Freedom Flotilla participants are not intimidated. "Where our governments have failed the Palestinians of Gaza, civil society must act instead."

U.N.: 34 killed in Iraqi raid on exile camp

Army Times

BAGHDAD — Thirty-four Iranian exiles were killed when Iraqi soldiers stormed Camp Ashraf last week, a U.N. spokesman said Thursday in the first independent death toll of the raid that has drawn sharp rebukes from Baghdad’s Western allies.

U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville in Geneva said a team of U.N. observers saw 28 bodies still at the camp during a Wednesday visit to the exiles’ compound in eastern Diyala province. Most of the bodies appeared to have been shot, he said.

Three of the bodies appeared to have been crushed to death, a Western diplomat in Baghdad said — likely from being run over by a car.

“It’s clearly a very serious incident and we are trying to get more information,” Colville said. Women were among the dead, he said.

He said six bodies have still not been found.

The raid targeted the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, which seeks to overthrow Iran’s clerical leaders. The group won refuge at Camp Ashraf years ago during the regime of Saddam Hussein, who saw them as a convenient ally against Iran. But since then, the exiles have been an irritant to Iraq’s new Shiite-led government that is trying to bolster ties with Tehran.

After Saddam fell, U.S. troops took control of Camp Ashraf, disarmed its fighters and confined the resident to their 30-square-mile camp. In return, the military signed the agreement with the camp’s residents giving them protected status under the Geneva Conventions.

But it’s not clear whether the residents still have those legal protections.

Both Iran and the U.S. consider the group to be a terrorist threat, although the European Union removed the People’s Mujahedeen from its own terror list several years ago.

The raid was sharply criticized by Iraqi allies in Washington, London and Geneva, although it was praised by Iran. Wednesday’s U.N. visit was critical because the Ashraf residents and the Iraqi government have issued wildly different accounts of the raid and the reasons behind it.

The visit to Camp Ashraf came five days after agency first demanded to be allowed in. The Iraqi army and police have blocked access to the camp for more than a year, following a similar raid in July 2009. A U.S. Army medical team also entered the camp last weekend to provide humanitarian aid but has refused comment on what it looked like inside. Journalists have not been allowed in.

Until the U.N. visit, the only official casualty count in the raid came from the morgue at Baqouba public hospital, where officials said they received 12 bodies from the camp.

Ashraf resident Shahriar Kia said the 12 bodies at the morgue are likely among about 50 camp residents who died after they were taken to the hospital hours after the raid.

Kia demanded that the U.N. publicly release its findings of what they saw, “and do not allow the Iraqi government and the religious fascism ruling in Iran to misuse the public unawareness in order to continue their crimes against Ashraf residents.”

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh did not immediately respond Thursday to the U.N. findings. Earlier this week, he said the Iraqi government voted to help move the Ashraf residents outside the country of by the end of the year because “Iraq is not the choice for them.”

Al-Dabbagh did issue a statement Thursday that welcomed what it described as U.S. support to the government’s efforts to find “another option for Ashraf camp residents to live in rather than Iraq.”
The Ashraf residents maintained from the start that 34 people were killed and as many as 325 wounded when Iraqi army units broke through the camp gate and starting firing into the crowd of people who had rushed outside to protect their homes.

The Iraqi government said three people were killed, according to an army official Thursday, and blamed the Ashraf residents for inciting the raid by hurling rocks at soldiers and throwing themselves in front of military cars.

The U.S. military says Ashraf residents’ protected status expired in late 2008 when Baghdad and Washington signed a security agreement that limited U.S. authority in Iraq.

The Ashraf residents and their lawyers in Washington dispute that, and demand that the American military continue to protect them and intervene on their behalf with the Iraqi government.

The International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, which oversees whether nations are complying with the Geneva treaties, has declined to clarify.