In Pakistan, however, the CIA’s covert drone program was relieved of even the pretense of observing such constraints. In Somalia and Yemen, just as in Pakistan, strikes have claimed the lives of numerous civilians, while the targets selected for remote-control murder posed no “imminent threat” to the US.
The reality is that the supposed restrictions have been observed nowhere in the world. Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, was killed in a subsequent US drone strike. In his speech, Obama acknowledged that he authorized the killing of US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in a 2011 drone strike in Yemen. The American president arrogated to himself the power to order the killing of anyone- including American citizens- without charges, much less trials. These purported restrictions were made public as part of the administration’s effort to lend a veneer of legality to a state assassination program that is in flagrant violation of both international law and the US Constitution. The US president outlined these rules in a speech delivered at the National Defense University in May 2013, insisting that drone strikes would be ordered only against alleged “terrorists” posing “a continuing and imminent threat to the American people,” and only under conditions of “near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured.” What he left concealed was the fact that the guidelines for “the region” were at odds with the formal rules existing everywhere else. In the course of his remarks-which he cynically boasted were proof of an “American democracy, committed to openness”-Obama stated that the deadly operation last January had been “fully consistent with the guidelines under which we conduct counterterrorism efforts in the region.” President Obama made an extraordinary public admission of US responsibility for the killing of the two Western hostages in a White House announcement last Thursday.
Drone station 2015 free#
Haughwout’s father told a local television station that his son created the drone with a college professor as part of a project.The killing of US and Italian aid workers Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto in a January 2015 drone strike stemmed, at least in part, from a secret order by President Barack Obama exempting the Central Intelligence Agency drone war in Pakistan from restrictions supposedly imposed on drone attacks in other countries.Īccording to current and former US officials quoted by the Wall Street Journal Monday, the administration tightened the rules governing drone warfare in 2013, but issued a secret waiver allowing the CIA an essentially free rein in carrying out its murderous campaign in northwestern Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, near the Afghan border. In July, the F.A.A., along with police in Clinton, Conn., began investigating after 18-year-old Austin Haughwout posted a video online of shots being fired from a drone rigged with a handgun, The A.P. His lawyer said he was trying to take photos of a globe sculpture at nearby Flushing Meadows Park. Daniel Verley, a high school teacher in New York City, was charged with reckless endangerment after he was accused of crashing a drone at the United States Open tennis tournament, according to The A.P. A military sky diver parachuting into the stadium told the police that he had to evade the drone, which came within 20 feet of his parachute, the article said. The police at the University of Kentucky charged a graduate student with endangerment, accusing him of flying a drone that crashed inside the school’s football stadium before a game on Sept. Officer Howard Kirkland was fired days later, the station said. 14 after being accused of using a drone to spy on a neighbor, according to a local news station, WALB. The authorities said a former police officer in Valdosta, Ga., was charged with felony eavesdropping on Sept. Last week, an inmate and two other men were indicted and accused of devising a plot to smuggle drugs, cellphones and other contraband into a Maryland prison using a drone, the Baltimore Sun reported. The helicopter “had to make some movements to avoid” the drone, a police officer said. On Tuesday, a 57-year-old man was charged in Los Angeles with obstructing a police officer after officials said he flew a drone near a police helicopter, according to the Los Angeles Times. The Pasadena case is perhaps the most startling of a string of recent incidents.
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