Politics
Families of Drone Strike Victims in Yemen File Suit in Washington
Scott Shane, THE NEW YORK TIMES
WASHINGTON (The New York Times) — The families of an anti-Qaeda cleric and a police officer killed in an American drone strike in Yemen filed suit in federal court in Washington on Sunday night, asking the court to declare that the strike was unlawful.
The lawsuit, which seeks no monetary damages, is described by the complainants as an attempt to break through the secrecy surrounding drone strikes and to have the court impose some public accountability for mistakes made in the program.
It cites President Obama’s decision in April to publicly disclose that a separate American strike, on a Qaeda compound in Pakistan, had inadvertently killed two Western hostages, an American and an Italian.
The lawsuit notes that Mr. Obama said at the time that the hostages’ “families deserve to know the truth” and that the United States was willing “to confront squarely our imperfections and to learn from our mistakes.”
###