Jango
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The Mail on Sunday today reveals shocking new evidence of the full horrific impact of US drone attacks in Pakistan.
A damning dossier assembled from exhaustive research into the strikes targets sets out in heartbreaking detail the deaths of teachers, students and Pakistani policemen. It also describes how bereaved relatives are forced to gather their loved ones dismembered body parts in the aftermath of strikes.
The dossier has been assembled by human rights lawyer Shahzad Akbar, who works for Pakistans Foundation for Fundamental Rights and the British human rights charity Reprieve.
Filed in two separate court cases, it is set to trigger a formal murder investigation by police into the roles of two US officials said to have ordered the strikes. They are Jonathan Banks, former head of the Central Intelligence Agencys Islamabad station, and John A. Rizzo, the CIAs former chief lawyer. Mr Akbar and his staff have already gathered further testimony which has yet to be filed.
We have statements from a further 82 victims families relating to more than 30 drone strikes, he said. This is their only hope of justice.
In the first case, which has already been heard by a court in Islamabad, judgment is expected imminently. If the judge grants Mr Akbars petition, an international arrest warrant will be issued via Interpol against the two Americans.....
.....The plaintiff in the Islamabad case is Karim Khan, 45, a journalist and translator with two masters degrees, whose family comes from the village of Machi Khel in the tribal region of North Waziristan.
His eldest son, Zahinullah, 18, and his brother, Asif Iqbal, 35, were killed by a Hellfire missile fired from a Predator drone that struck the familys guest dining room at about 9.30pm on New Years Eve, 2009.
Asif had changed his surname because he loved to recite Iqbal, Pakistans national poet, and Mr Khan said: We are an educated family. My uncle is a hospital doctor in Islamabad, and we all work in professions such as teaching.
We have never had anything to do with militants or terrorists, and for that reason I always assumed we would be safe.
Mr Khan said: Zahinullah, who had been studying in Islamabad, had returned to the village to work his way through college, taking a part-time job as a school caretaker.
He was a quiet boy and studious always in the top group of his class. Zahinullah also liked football, cricket and hunting partridges.
Asif, he added, was an English teacher and had spent several years taking further courses to improve his qualifications while already in work.
Mr Khan said: He was my kid brother. We used to have a laugh, tell jokes. His first child was less than a year old when Asif was killed.
Included in the legal dossier are documents that corroborate Asif and Zahinullas educational and employment records, as well as their death certificates. Killed alongside them was Khaliq Dad, a stonemason who was staying with the family while he worked on a local mosque.
Mr Khan, who had been working for a TV station in Islamabad, said he was given the news of their deaths in a 2am phone call from a cousin.
According to the legal claim, someone from the Pakistan CIA network led by Mr Banks who left Pakistan in 2010 targeted the Khan family and guided the Hellfire missile by throwing a GPS homing device into their compound.
A senior CIA officer said: We do not discuss active operations or allegations against specific individuals.'
Mr Rizzo is named because of an interview he gave to a US reporter after he retired as CIA General Counsel last year. In it, he boasted that he had personally authorised every drone strike in which Americas enemies were hunted down and blown to bits.
He added: Its basically a hit-list .  .  . The Predator is the weapon of choice, but it could also be someone putting a bullet in your head.
Last night a senior Pakistani security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that Pakistans own intelligence agency, the ISI, has always been excluded by the CIA from choosing drone targets.
They insist on using their own networks, paying their own informants. Dollars can be very persuasive, said the official.
He claimed the intelligence behind drone strikes was often seriously flawed. As a result, they are causing the loss of innocent lives.
But even this, he added, was not as objectionable as the so-called signature strikes when a drone operator, sitting at a computer screen thousands of miles away in Nevada, selects a target because he thinks the drone camera has spotted something suspicious.
He said: It could be a vehicle containing armed men heading towards the border, and the operator thinks, Lets get them before they get there, without any idea of who they are.
It could also just be people sitting together. In the frontier region, every male is armed but it doesnt mean they are militants.
One such signature strike killed more than 40 people in Datta Khel in North Waziristan on March 17 last year. The victims, Mr Akbars dossier makes clear, had gathered for a jirga a tribal meeting in order to discuss a dispute between two clans over the division of royalties from a chromite mine.
Read more: US drone attacks: CIA chiefs face arrest over horrific evidence of bloody 'video-game' sorties | Mail Online
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Read the whole story on the link.
Really horrific to see how the US kills people just like that, pressing a button.
There is a story in first year FSc English, the first chapter is named Button Button. In it, a woman is offered a huge sum of money. To get the money, she simply has to press a button and somebody who she does not know will get killed and she will get the money. In the end, she presses the button and her husband is killed by a train accident. The whole story is long, but point is that the US is also following the womans strategy. Just kill somebody, what does it matter to us.
And now I really think hard as to why a certain educated man I know (Pashtun) supports drone strikes, simply because they sometimes hit Uzbek militants? PA also kills foreign militants, but no support for PA.
All in all, this gives a good insight into how drones kill people, and this even ain't a Pakistani source.
Another point to note is that this maybe a consequence of the Peace march by IK and PTI. Increased awareness in the society in UK and US about drone strikes, and people now getting to learn the horrific tales.
A damning dossier assembled from exhaustive research into the strikes targets sets out in heartbreaking detail the deaths of teachers, students and Pakistani policemen. It also describes how bereaved relatives are forced to gather their loved ones dismembered body parts in the aftermath of strikes.
The dossier has been assembled by human rights lawyer Shahzad Akbar, who works for Pakistans Foundation for Fundamental Rights and the British human rights charity Reprieve.
Filed in two separate court cases, it is set to trigger a formal murder investigation by police into the roles of two US officials said to have ordered the strikes. They are Jonathan Banks, former head of the Central Intelligence Agencys Islamabad station, and John A. Rizzo, the CIAs former chief lawyer. Mr Akbar and his staff have already gathered further testimony which has yet to be filed.
We have statements from a further 82 victims families relating to more than 30 drone strikes, he said. This is their only hope of justice.
In the first case, which has already been heard by a court in Islamabad, judgment is expected imminently. If the judge grants Mr Akbars petition, an international arrest warrant will be issued via Interpol against the two Americans.....
.....The plaintiff in the Islamabad case is Karim Khan, 45, a journalist and translator with two masters degrees, whose family comes from the village of Machi Khel in the tribal region of North Waziristan.
His eldest son, Zahinullah, 18, and his brother, Asif Iqbal, 35, were killed by a Hellfire missile fired from a Predator drone that struck the familys guest dining room at about 9.30pm on New Years Eve, 2009.
Asif had changed his surname because he loved to recite Iqbal, Pakistans national poet, and Mr Khan said: We are an educated family. My uncle is a hospital doctor in Islamabad, and we all work in professions such as teaching.
We have never had anything to do with militants or terrorists, and for that reason I always assumed we would be safe.
Mr Khan said: Zahinullah, who had been studying in Islamabad, had returned to the village to work his way through college, taking a part-time job as a school caretaker.
He was a quiet boy and studious always in the top group of his class. Zahinullah also liked football, cricket and hunting partridges.
Asif, he added, was an English teacher and had spent several years taking further courses to improve his qualifications while already in work.
Mr Khan said: He was my kid brother. We used to have a laugh, tell jokes. His first child was less than a year old when Asif was killed.
Included in the legal dossier are documents that corroborate Asif and Zahinullas educational and employment records, as well as their death certificates. Killed alongside them was Khaliq Dad, a stonemason who was staying with the family while he worked on a local mosque.
Mr Khan, who had been working for a TV station in Islamabad, said he was given the news of their deaths in a 2am phone call from a cousin.
According to the legal claim, someone from the Pakistan CIA network led by Mr Banks who left Pakistan in 2010 targeted the Khan family and guided the Hellfire missile by throwing a GPS homing device into their compound.
A senior CIA officer said: We do not discuss active operations or allegations against specific individuals.'
Mr Rizzo is named because of an interview he gave to a US reporter after he retired as CIA General Counsel last year. In it, he boasted that he had personally authorised every drone strike in which Americas enemies were hunted down and blown to bits.
He added: Its basically a hit-list .  .  . The Predator is the weapon of choice, but it could also be someone putting a bullet in your head.
Last night a senior Pakistani security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that Pakistans own intelligence agency, the ISI, has always been excluded by the CIA from choosing drone targets.
They insist on using their own networks, paying their own informants. Dollars can be very persuasive, said the official.
He claimed the intelligence behind drone strikes was often seriously flawed. As a result, they are causing the loss of innocent lives.
But even this, he added, was not as objectionable as the so-called signature strikes when a drone operator, sitting at a computer screen thousands of miles away in Nevada, selects a target because he thinks the drone camera has spotted something suspicious.
He said: It could be a vehicle containing armed men heading towards the border, and the operator thinks, Lets get them before they get there, without any idea of who they are.
It could also just be people sitting together. In the frontier region, every male is armed but it doesnt mean they are militants.
One such signature strike killed more than 40 people in Datta Khel in North Waziristan on March 17 last year. The victims, Mr Akbars dossier makes clear, had gathered for a jirga a tribal meeting in order to discuss a dispute between two clans over the division of royalties from a chromite mine.
Read more: US drone attacks: CIA chiefs face arrest over horrific evidence of bloody 'video-game' sorties | Mail Online
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Read the whole story on the link.
Really horrific to see how the US kills people just like that, pressing a button.
There is a story in first year FSc English, the first chapter is named Button Button. In it, a woman is offered a huge sum of money. To get the money, she simply has to press a button and somebody who she does not know will get killed and she will get the money. In the end, she presses the button and her husband is killed by a train accident. The whole story is long, but point is that the US is also following the womans strategy. Just kill somebody, what does it matter to us.
And now I really think hard as to why a certain educated man I know (Pashtun) supports drone strikes, simply because they sometimes hit Uzbek militants? PA also kills foreign militants, but no support for PA.
All in all, this gives a good insight into how drones kill people, and this even ain't a Pakistani source.
Another point to note is that this maybe a consequence of the Peace march by IK and PTI. Increased awareness in the society in UK and US about drone strikes, and people now getting to learn the horrific tales.
