Eight years after my brother-in-law and nephew were blown to pieces by a Hellfire missile fired from a U.S. drone, I am still fighting for answers.
When a German court found in my favor last year, it looked like we might finally be able to bring some accountability to the U.S. drone program. But on Nov. 25, Germany’s Federal Administrative Court ruled that despite an earlier court’s finding that the U.S. military’s Ramstein Air Base in southwestern Germany had played a “central role” in drone strikes in Yemen that result in “civilian casualties on a regular basis,” Germany has no obligation to do more than lodge diplomatic protests, encouraging the U.S. government to act lawfully.
