Truthdig
Is the U.S. Vulnerable to War Crimes Charge for Supporting Saudi Bombing of
Innocents in Yemen?
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/us_vulnerable_to_war_crimes_charge_suppo
rt_saudi_bombing_yemen_20161011/
AddThis Sharing Buttons
Share to FacebookShare to TwitterShare to MoreShare to Email
Posted on Oct 11, 2016
By Sarah Lazare /
AlterNet(http://www.alternet.org/world/us-vulnerable-war-crimes-charge-suppo
rting-saudi-bombing-innocents-yemen)
Sana'a Old City, Yemen. eesti(https://www.flickr.com/photos/eesti/) /
CC BY-NC-ND 2.0(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/)
A few days ago, White House National Security Council spokesperson Ned Price
released a
statement(https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/10/08/statement-n
sc-spokesperson-ned-price-yemen) claiming that the Obama administration is
"deeply disturbed" by reports that a recent Saudi coalition airstrike on a
funeral procession in Yemen killed at least 140 people. "U.S. security
cooperation with Saudi Arabia is not a blank check," he proclaimed.
Yet, internal government documents exposed Monday by Reuters journalists
Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay cast doubt on such claims, revealing that
the Obama administration has long known that the 18-month military campaign
is killing thousands of civilians in Yemen and could implicate the United
States in war crimes.
"The Obama administration went ahead with a $1.3 billion arms sale to Saudi
Arabia last year despite warnings from some officials that the United States
could be implicated in war crimes for supporting a Saudi-led air campaign in
Yemen that has killed thousands of civilians," write Strobel and Landay. The
journalists cite "the accounts of current and former officials, as well as
government documents from mid-May 2015 to February 2016 that were obtained
by Reuters through a Freedom of Information Act Request (see
here(http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/USA-SAUDI-YEMEN/0100220E50E/U
SA-SAUDI-YEMEN%20DOC1.pdf) ,
here(http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/USA-SAUDI-YEMEN/0100220E50F/U
SA-SAUDI-YEMEN%20DOC2.pdf) ,
here(http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/USA-SAUDI-YEMEN/0100220E50G/U
SA-SAUDI-YEMEN%20DOC3.pdf) and
here(http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/USA-SAUDI-YEMEN/0100220E50H/U
SA-SAUDI-YEMEN%20DOC4.pdf) ).
Notably, the Reuters report reveals that "State Department officials also
were privately skeptical of the Saudi military's ability to target Houthi
militants without killing civilians and destroying 'critical infrastructure'
needed for Yemen to recover." One particularly damning passage reads:
State Department lawyers "had their hair on fire" as reports of civilian
casualties in Yemen multiplied in 2015, and prominent human rights groups
charged that Washington could be complicit in war crimes, one U.S. official
said. That official and the others requested anonymity.
During an October 2015 meeting with private human rights groups, a State
Department specialist on protecting civilians in conflict acknowledged Saudi
strikes were going awry.
"The strikes are not intentionally indiscriminate but rather result from a
lack of Saudi experience with dropping munitions and firing missiles," the
specialist said, according to a department account of the meeting.
According to Reuters, Obama administration lawyers were ultimately undecided
about whether the role of the U.S. government as a "co-belligerent" would
put it at risk of war crimes charges. Strobel and Landay note that "one of
the emails made a specific reference to a 2013 ruling from the war crimes
trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor that significantly widened
the international legal definition of aiding and abetting such crimes."
Human rights rights organizations say there is a compelling case for war
crimes charges to be filed against the United States, which is one of at
least a dozen countries participating in or backing the coalition, including
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Pakistan, Sudan, United Arab Emirates,
Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Britain.
Amnesty International
says(https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/09/yemen-the-forgotten-war/
) it has documented "more than 30 air strikes across six different
governorates (Sana'a, Sa'da, Hajjah, Hodeidah, Ta'iz and Lahj) by the Saudi
Arabia-led coalition that appear to have violated international humanitarian
law (the rules that apply during a conflict which are sometimes known as the
"laws of war"), resulting in 366 civilian deaths (more than half of whom
were women and children) and 272 civilian injuries. These have included
attacks that appear to have deliberately targeted civilians and civilian
objects such as hospitals, schools, markets and mosques, which may amount to
war crimes."
Since March 2015, Washington approved more than $22.2 billion in arms sales
to Saudi Arabia, not all of which has arrived. The Obama administration has
deployed troops, assisted the coalition in identifying bomb targets and
conducting intelligence and sent warships to enforce the naval blockade that
has choked off critical imports, contributing to a crisis that has left at
least 21 million
people(http://time.com/3935125/yemen-humanitarian-aid-united-nations-famine-
ceasefire/) in desperate need of food.
Throughout the campaign, coalition bombs have consistently struck civilians,
including
factories(https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/04/15/yemen-factory-airstrike-killed
-31-civilians-0) ,
weddings(http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/29/world/middleeast/airstrikes-in-ye
men-hit-wedding-party-killing-dozens.html) and even a center for the
blind(https://theintercept.com/2016/01/05/saudi-coalition-just-bombed-a-cent
er-for-the-blind-in-yemen/) . The Saudi-led coalition is responsible for the
majority(http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-35842708) of the
thousands of civilians killed and wounded.
Denouncing 'Colossal Waste' of Drug War, Report Makes Case for
Decriminalization
Clinton's Campaign Tries to Divert Attention From WikiLeaks' 'Podesta
Emails' Toward Russia
Mental Disorders Induced by Neoliberalism Are Crushing the Bodies and Minds
of Millions
Live at Truthdig: What Can Be Done to Reform the U.S. Prison System?
Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines
C 2016 Truthdig, LLC. All rights reserved.
Signup for Truthdig's newsletter
