This ended a legal saga that lasted for more than a decade.
The German Constitutional Court, like a lower court before it, has dismissed a lawsuit filed by two Yemenis living in Germany over the deaths of their two relatives in Yemen in a US drone strike in the summer of 2012.
The German government is not obliged to control US armed drone missions in Yemen, for which the United States uses one of its military bases in Germany, a German court ruled today.
This brings to an end a legal saga that has lasted for more than a decade. The German Constitutional Court, like a lower court before it, dismissed a lawsuit filed by two Yemenis living in Germany over the deaths of their two relatives in Yemen in a US drone strike in the summer of 2012.
Germany’s highest court finds the lawsuit unfounded, said Court Vice President Doris Koenig.
“Our faith in international law has been shaken,” Ahmed and Khalid bin Ali Jaber responded through the human rights organization ECCHR, which supported them during the trial.
In contrast, the German government welcomed the Court’s decision as “an important message for our foreign and security policy,” the foreign and defense ministries said in a joint statement.
The court acknowledged that the drones do not take off from, nor are they controlled from, the US base in Ramstein in western Germany.
But the signals needed for this are transmitted from the United States to Ramstein, and the question of Berlin’s possible responsibility for the attacks “could remain open,” the Court said in its decision, noting that Germany has a “general obligation to protect fundamental human rights and the main norms of international humanitarian law,” including foreigners abroad.
But “two conditions of responsibility must be met for such a duty to protect to be established,” the supreme judges stressed: the first is “a sufficient connection with the authorities” of Germany that allows the establishment of a “relationship of responsibility,” and the second is “the existence of a serious risk of a systematic violation of international law.”
Since these conditions were not met in the case of Yemen, the hypothesis of German responsibility was rejected, said Doris Koenig.
On the other hand, the two relevant ministries claim that “these (American) attacks, in the government’s opinion, remain within the acceptable limits of international law”, and that Berlin “does not have a fundamental obligation to protect foreigners abroad affected by military actions of third countries”.
Germany, on the contrary, has “great freedom in assessing the compliance of these actions with international law,” the ministries indicate.
The chaos caused by the civil war that has been raging in Yemen for a decade is benefiting jihadist groups, especially the Houthi rebels against whom the United States has stepped up attacks in recent months.
The original lawsuit over the attacks in Yemen dates back to 2014, when Angela Merkel was Chancellor. Washington was then regularly carrying out drone strikes in the country, particularly in the fight against al-Qaeda.
Although the Constitutional Court in Münster did not rule in favor of the plaintiffs, it ordered the government in Berlin to take “appropriate measures” to ensure that the United States respects international law when carrying out these attacks, which must, it was pointed out, specifically spare civilians.
In 2020, the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig dismissed a lawsuit by Yemeni prosecutors, finding that Berlin’s diplomatic efforts were sufficient to ensure that Washington respected international law. The Yemenis appealed the decision to the Constitutional Court, which today concluded the case.
Ahmed and Khalid bin Ali Jaber stressed today that they have been “fighting for justice for 13 years” – since their relatives Salem and Walid were killed in a US attack, and that they are disappointed with today’s verdict because “the court said that Germany had no duty to protect them, despite enabling the attack that killed them.”
Bonus video:
Lawsuit dismissed over role of US military base in Germany in deadly attack in Yemen – vijesti.me
