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Germany’s highest court rejected a case on Tuesday brought by Yemeni plaintiffs who argued the German government failed in its duty to protect relatives who they say were killed in a 2012 drone strike that was carried out with help from a US military base in Germany.
Ruling in a case that has been making its way through the German judicial system for over a decade, the Federal Constitutional Court found the German government can have a concrete duty to protect foreign citizens abroad in some cases.
However, the court said that this could only apply when there is a “sufficient connection” to the German state’s authority and “a serious danger of systematic violation” of international law.
The judges found this case didn’t fulfil those requirements.
The plaintiffs argued the US military’s Ramstein air base in southwestern Germany plays a key role in relaying flight control data used for armed drone strikes in Yemen via a satellite relay station set up with the knowledge and approval of the government in Berlin.
The Higher Administrative Court in Münster ruled in 2019 that the German government had partial responsibility to ensure US drone strikes controlled with help from Ramstein are in line with international law, but judges stopped short of ordering the ban human rights activists had called for.
The following year, a federal court overturned the ruling.
The Supreme Court said the evidence submitted did not lead to the conclusion that the US applied criteria that were unacceptable under international law in determining legitimate military targets in Yemen.
The European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights, which argued the case for the Yemeni plaintiffs, said “at a time when the adherence of state action to international law is increasingly being called into question, the court has failed to send a strong signal.”
“Individual legal protection remains a theoretical possibility without practical consequences,” it added.
In summer 2012, two members of the bin Ali Jaber family were killed in a US drone strike targeting alleged members of Al-Qaeda in the Yemeni village of Khashamir.
Since 2002, the US has used targeted drone attacks to kill those suspected of being involved in terrorism in countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Libya.
Additional sources • AP
