From the New York Times:
SANA, Yemen — I LEARNED that my 16-year-old grandson, Abdulrahman — a United States citizen — had been killed by an American drone strike from news reports the morning after he died.
The missile killed him, his teenage cousin and at least five other civilians on Oct. 14, 2011, while the boys were eating dinner at an open-air restaurant in southern Yemen.
. . .
The attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., said only that Abdulrahman was not “specifically targeted,” raising more questions than he answered.
My grandson was killed by his own government. The Obama administration must answer for its actions and be held accountable. On Friday, I will petition a federal court in Washington to require the government to do just that.
Abdulrahman was born in Denver. He lived in America until he was 7, then came to live with me in Yemen. He was a typical teenager — he watched “The Simpsons,” listened to Snoop Dogg, read “Harry Potter” and had a Facebook page with many friends. He had a mop of curly hair, glasses like me and a wide, goofy smile.
In 2010, the Obama administration put Abdulrahman’s father, my son Anwar, on C.I.A. and Pentagon “kill lists” of suspected terrorists targeted for death. A drone took his life on Sept. 30, 2011.
The government repeatedly made accusations of terrorism against Anwar — who was also an American citizen — but never charged him with a crime. No court ever reviewed the government’s claims nor was any evidence of criminal wrongdoing ever presented to a court. He did not deserve to be deprived of his constitutional rights as an American citizen and killed.
Early one morning in September 2011, Abdulrahman set out from our home in Sana by himself. He went to look for his father, whom he hadn’t seen for years. He left a note for his mother explaining that he missed his father and wanted to find him, and asking her to forgive him for leaving without permission.
A couple of days after Abdulrahman left, we were relieved to receive word that he was safe and with cousins in southern Yemen, where our family is from. Days later, his father was targeted and killed by American drones in a northern province, hundreds of miles away. After Anwar died, Abdulrahman called us and said he was going to return home.
That was the last time I heard his voice. He was killed just two weeks after his father.
https://www.nytimes.com/...
This raises a couple of questions:
"Not Specifically Targeted" does that mean he was killed in a signature strike?
What the hell our we doing bombing cafes to kill children? This is the kind of thing that we once condemned the PLO for. When it comes to describing actions that make you a terrorist, I would say blowing up dinners and killing a bunch of children comes pretty high up on the list.
I think Eric Holder needs to go familiarize himself with an aspect of Article 1 Section 9 of our constitution.
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
And the definitions of Bill of Attainder from wikipedia
A bill of attainder (also known as an act of attainder or writ of attainder) is an act of a legislature declaring a person or group of persons guilty of some crime and punishing them without privilege of a judicial trial. As with attainder resulting from the normal judicial process, the effect of such a bill is to nullify the targeted person’s civil rights, most notably the right to own property (and thus pass it on to heirs), the right to a title of nobility, and, in at least the original usage, the right to life itself.
And perhaps one of the larger ironies of all, it seems the US government has no idea how a family/clan based society works. Just because one member of a family holds a certain political belief doesn't mean that every member does. (For an example from the United States looking a Ben Franklin and his son William, the loyalist royal governor of New Jersey).
Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S. Citizen and Imam killed in a US drone strike, came from a prominent Yemeni family. His grandfather, Nasser al-Awlaki, is a US educated Ph.D, influential secularist and former Yemeni minister of agriculture (and I would assume former Yemeni MP if he held a cabinet level appointment). This is the kind of person the US needs to have supporting us. Now that we have killed both his son and grandson, I'd say getting any support from Nasser al-Awlaki or any members of his extended family is not going to happen.