Yemen

NOVANEWS People gather at the site of a drone strike on the road between Yafe and Radfan districts of the southern Yemeni province of Lahj August 11, 2013. (Reuters). A new report by Human Rights Watch once again confirms that Hellfire rockets lack selectivity and exterminate women and children more often than they hit Al-Qaeda associates. Last month the UN urged the US to reveal data on civilian drone casualties. The prominent human rights organization has released a detailed 102-page report on the US drone attacks and airstrikes in Yemen against militants of the Al-Qaeda wing in the country simultaneously with another human rights organization Amnesty International issuing a report on US drone strikes in Pakistan. Basically, the HRW report has maintained an already widely-known fact t...

NOVANEWS Ibrahim Mothana (1988-2013); 'As surely as he will be missed, his work and his example will continue to inspire his colleagues, friends, and compatriots' - Jon Queally Friends and colleagues of Yemen social justice campaigner and political activist Ibrahim Mothana have been expressing shock, sadness and loss over the early death of the 24-old-man who died in Sanaa on Thursday. Ibrahim Mothana (10/23/1988 – 9/5/2013)Known internationally as a voice for the peaceful pro-democracy uprising in Yemen that began in 2011 and as a tireless critic of the U.S. drone campaign that has terrorized his country in recent years, Mothana was both a co-founder of the Wantan Party in Yemen and an international spokesperson for what many term the "New Yemen" envisioned by many of its citizens, e...

NOVANEWS by Rebecca Hellmich A headline is sometimes worth a thousand words, and this was definitely the case after a deadly drone strike occurred in Yemen last week. "Drone Strike Kills Six Suspected Militants in Yemen,” a Reutersheadline (8/7/13) declared.  "More Suspected Al-Qaeda Militants Killed as Drone Strikes Intensify in Yemen," a CNN.com headline  (8/8/13) offered. Whatever the language, one message was clear: "Suspected terrorists" or "militants" had been killed. But with several drone strikes over the past week in Yemen, how can anyone actually know who is being killed? The deceptive way the Obama administration defines "militants" has already been well-established–as the New York Times (5/29/12) put it, the White House policy "in effect counts all military-age males in a ...

NOVANEWS   heraldscotland.com When Abdullah Saleh Rabeh heard an explosion near Rada’a in Yemen, he went to help. Arriving at the scene, he found the daily shuttle bus to Sabool on fire. “I saw people trapped in the vehicle burning – I think they were already dead,” he said. He described how a woman and her daughter wedged next to the driver had been killed. “Some of the injured were crawling away from the scene,” he said. “The injuries were severe – the clothes had fused to the survivors’ skin and some bits of skin had burned off.” Rabeh had witnessed the aftermath of a US drone strike on September 2, 2012. He was interviewed in April this year by lawyers from the human rights group, Reprieve. After the attack any planes flying overhead terrified his neighbours. “We all lived in a ...

NOVANEWS heraldscotland.com When Abdullah Saleh Rabeh heard an explosion near Rada’a in Yemen, he went to help. Arriving at the scene, he found the daily shuttle bus to Sabool on fire. “I saw people trapped in the vehicle burning – I think they were already dead,” he said. He described how a woman and her daughter wedged next to the driver had been killed. “Some of the injured were crawling away from the scene,” he said. “The injuries were severe – the clothes had fused to the survivors’ skin and some bits of skin had burned off.” Rabeh had witnessed the aftermath of a US drone strike on September 2, 2012. He was interviewed in April this year by lawyers from the human rights group, Reprieve. After the attack any planes flying overhead terrified his neighbours. “We all lived in a state o...

NOVANEWS truth-out.org In his New York Times best selling Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield, investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill offers a riveting follow-up to his 2007 Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. Only now, in the Obama administration, the CIA has assumed the role – working with the Pentagon at times – of carrying out extra judicial killings through drone strikes, missile attacks coordinated with the military, and special unit assaults, among other strategies. What were formerly actions too illicit and morally disturbing to be carried out by US intelligence agencies and the armed forces are now incorporated, as Scahill recounts in this exhaustively researched book (with nearly 100 pages of footnotes), within the CIA and the Pentagon through a...