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For Immediate Release
July, 01 2016, 03:30pm EDT
Contact:
Reprieve's London office can be contacted on: communications [at] reprieve.org.uk / +44 (0) 207 553 8140.,Reprieve US,, based in New York City, can be contacted on Katherine [dot] oshea [at] reprieve.org
Drone Death Figures Show the U.S. "Simply Doesn't Know Who it has Killed"
Responding to civilian casualty figures released by the White House today, international human rights organization Reprieve has expressed dismay at how little the Obama Administration appears to know about those it has killed in its covert use of lethal drones outside of war zones.
Responding to civilian casualty figures released by the White House today, international human rights organization Reprieve has expressed dismay at how little the Obama Administration appears to know about those it has killed in its covert use of lethal drones outside of war zones.
Jennifer Gibson, attorney at Reprieve, said:
"For three years now, President Obama has been promising to shed light on the CIA's covert drone program. Today, he had a golden opportunity to do just that.
"Instead, he chose to do the opposite. He published numbers that are hundreds lower than even the lowest estimates by independent organizations.
"The only thing those numbers tell us is that this Administration simply doesn't know who it has killed.
"Back in 2011, it claimed to have killed "only 60" civilians. Does it really expect us to believe that it has killed only 4 more civilians since then, despite taking hundreds more strikes?
"The most glaring absence from this announcement are the names and faces of those civilians that have been killed.
"Today's announcement tells us nothing about 14 year old Faheem Qureshi, who was severely injured in Obama's first drone strike. Reports suggest Obama knew he had killed civilians that day. Is Faheem's family in those numbers?
"They make no mention of nine-year old Nabila Rehman. She travelled all the way to the US in 2013 to try to get answers about the strike that killed her grandmother, Mamana Bibi. Will she now get the same apology as an American and Italian hostage killed in another strike?
"We need real transparency and accountability, not more smoke and mirrors. It's past time that there be an independent investigation into just who the US drone program has killed and what the rules and legal framework were for doing so.
"Only then can we begin to grapple with the effectiveness of this program and whether it really has made us any safer."
Faisal bin Ali Jaber, an engineer from Yemen whose family members were mistakenly killed by a US drone strike in 2012, said:
"The Obama Administration is wrong to think that publishing statistics makes up for the pain his secret drone program has caused families like mine.
"It's no surprise that the White House didn't bother to consult the victims of drone strikes before publishing these figures - the US has never even acknowledged its role in the deaths of our loved ones.
"My brother-in-law was an Imam who was leading a campaign against Al Qaeda's ideology - particularly their targeting of young boys. He spoke out against Al Qaeda in his sermons just few days before he was assassinated. We all expected that one day he would be killed by Al Qaeda, but instead he was killed by a US drone".
"Obama's secret drone wars have also killed schoolteachers, policemen, women and children. What we need from Obama is an apology - and a promise that these terrible crimes will not be repeated."
Reprieve is a UK-based human rights organization that uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantanamo Bay.
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren suggested President Donald Trump is running a "pay-to-play loyalty program for wealthy donors" after a report on Thursday revealed that more than half the companies that contributed to his White House ballroom project have been awarded government contracts over the last six months, totaling over $50 billion.
Examining the 27 publicly known corporate donors to the president’s $400 million gold-plated vanity project, the watchdog group Public Citizen found that 14 of them—more than half—had received either new or expanded contracts over the past six months after donating millions to the ballroom and appearing at a lavish White House banquet in October as Trump prepared to demolish the building's East Wing.
Over two-thirds, 19 of the 27 companies, received government contracts since fiscal year 2021, totaling over $338 billion. At least 16 out of 27 are also either facing federal enforcement actions and/or have had them suspended by the Trump administration.
“These giant corporations aren’t funding the Trump ballroom fiasco out of the goodness of their hearts. They have massive interests before the federal government, and they hope to curry favor with, and receive favorable treatment from, the Trump administration,” said Public Citizen democracy advocate Jon Golinger, an author of the report.
By far the biggest monetary beneficiary has been the military contractor Lockheed Martin, which received a $43.8 billion in new or expanded contract funding over the past six months after it pledged $10 million to fund the dance hall last fall.
Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting company that serves military and intelligence agencies and pledged at least $5 million to the project, received $4 billion in contracts over the same period.
Meanwhile, Palantir—the data-mining surveillance giant with deep ties to the Trump administration—reaped over $1 billion in contracts after giving its own $5 million donation.
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Other ballroom benefactors that have brought in more than $100 million worth of contracts over the past six months include Microsoft, Amazon, HP, and Caterpillar, while T-Mobile, Google, NextEra Energy, and Comcast have all brought in more than $10 million.
Public Citizen noted that while the White House has publicized some of the ballroom donors and others have been revealed by news organizations, not all of the companies that have contributed to the project are publicly known, since the secret funding agreement obtained by the group through a Freedom of Information Act request allows their identities to remain private.
In a statement to The Washington Post, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle suggested that critics should be grateful that Trump was soliciting donations from the wealthy for this very important undertaking.
“The same critics who are alleging fake conflicts of interest would also complain if American taxpayers were footing the bill for these long-overdue renovations,” he said, ignoring the fact that Trump has previously pressured Republicans in Congress to appropriate hundreds of millions in taxpayer funding to secure the ballroom.
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US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) General Counsel James Percival slammed McConnell's ruling in a social media post accusing "the Left" of "running the same gambit with so-called 'animus' claims since 2017."
"It is sabotage dressed in legal clothing," Percival added. "It goes like this: (1) the admin is racist, (2) therefore a policy I don’t like is motivated by race, (3) therefore it is invalid. They have used it on virtually every Trump-era DHS policy."
Plaintiffs and others involved in the case welcomed McConnell's decision.
“This ruling reaffirms a basic principle: The federal government cannot shut down lawful immigration pathways or discriminate against people based on where they come from,” Democracy Forward president and CEO Skye Perryman said in a statement.
"These unlawful policies caused enormous harm to families, workers, asylum seekers, and communities across the country who were left in limbo, unable to work, access protections, or move forward with their lives," Perryman added. "We are pleased that the court recognized the devastating human consequences of these policies. Our communities deserve a fair process governed by law, not political targeting rooted in fear-mongering and discrimination.”
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