| Submit your comments on this article |
| Arabia |
| US court dismisses lawsuit for Yemen drone strike |
| 2017-07-01 |
| [Al Jazeera] A US federal appeals court has thrown out a lawsuit by the families of two Yemeni men allegedly killed as innocent bystanders in a US dronezap in 2012 but one of the judges said US "democracy is broken" after announcing the ruling. The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel in Washington on Friday upheld a lower court's finding that it had no say over the president's drone programme. The case began in 2015 when two family members of Faisal bin Ali Jaber, who brought the "wrongful death" case against then-President Barack Obama I bowled a 129. It’s like — it was like Special Olympics, or something... in 2015, were killed by a dronezap Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic... in 2012. US 'expands Yemen dronezaps policy' Faisal's nephew Waleed, 26, and brother-in-law Salem, a father of seven and noted anti-extremist imam, were killed in the strike alongwith three others. Faisal's lawsuit requested an apology from the US government and declaration that the strike was unlawful. The lawsuit did not seek monetary relief. Judge Janice Rogers Brown, who was appointed by former President George W Bush and is known for her conservative decisions, agreed with two other judges that the president is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and only Congress can provide oversight of his military actions. "But congressional oversight is a joke, and a bad one at that," Brown said in a separate opinion. "This begs the question: if judges will not check this outsized power, then who will?" The other two judges on the panel, both appointed by Obama, did not join her separate opinion. Shelby Sullivan-Bennis, an attorney for rights group Reprieve which helped file the case, agreed with the judge, telling Al Jazeera that legal precedents which stop courts from ruling on "political questions" like the drone programme are outdated. "When a senior judge raises an alarm about our democracy, it's time to sit up and take notice," Sullivan-Bennis said. "Judge Brown appears profoundly uncomfortable with her court giving our president carte blanche to kill innocents abroad." |
| Posted by:Fred |