This video from Pakistan says about itself:
Karim Khan submits application to file FIR against Jonathan Banks
13 December 2010
Karim Khan, whose brother and son were killed in a drone strike, on Monday submitted an application for the registration of a First Investigation Report (FIR) against Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Station Chief Jonathan Banks. More here.
From daily The Morning Star in Britain:
PAKISTAN: The High Court in Islamabad ordered police today to begin criminal investigation of CIA involvement in a drone strike that killed three people on December 31 2009.
Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui told officers to examine whether former CIA Islamabad station chief Jonathan Banks and former CIA general counsel John Rizzo were guilty of committing murder, waging war against Pakistan and offences under the Terrorism Act 1997 for their involvement in authorising the strike.
Are US drone strikes in Pakistan war crimes? Only 12% of those killed are known militants. The numbers don’t lie, except when they do: here.
Related articles
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
Pingback: Secret torture prisons exposed by photos | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: ‘NATO has always been at war with Eurasia, err, Eastasia, err Iran, err …’ | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: CIA planned torture flight for Edward Snowden | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Germany expels CIA boss | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: US Department of Justice whitewashes CIA spying on Senate | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: United States woman jailed for photographing pro-peace protest | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Hundreds of thousands on US government’s ‘terrorist’ list | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: War is not peace, lesson of World War I | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Pakistani Imran Khan against Bush’s war | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Corporations sell cellphone spying tools to governments | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: British corporate involvement in US drone assassinations | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: ISIS murders another journalist, more escalation? | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: NATO summit and merchants of death | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Nobel Prize winner Malala’s views, don’t drown them in hypocritical praise | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: CIA torture report and the New York Times | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Pentagon wars in scores of countries | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: 13-year-old Yemeni boy dreamt about drones, killed by drone | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Saudi war on Yemen threatens Pakistan | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: United States government spied on its citizens long before 9/11 | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Drone assassination news | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: German professor praises drones, poison gas | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Saudi Arabia, stop bombing Yemen, United Nations say | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Refugees welcome, racism not welcome in Britain | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Anti-refugee policies and wars, 1915-2015 | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: ‘Jihadi John’ ISIS murderer murdered, victims’ families disagree | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Somali cattle herder drone attack victims sue Dutch government | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Drone, film on extra-judicial killing | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: ‘Brussels atrocities, weapons corporations guilty’, pope says | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Don’t send us back to Turkey, refugees say | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: David Cameron’s Panama, war scandals | Dear Kitty. Some blog
A week ago, I was at a Pakistani community event in Orlando. The host tapped me on the shoulder, and whispered, “tell them how you stopped the drones.”
So I told them. I’ll tell you, too.
On October 29, 2013, I hosted the first Congressional briefing with the testimony of drone warfare victims.
About a year prior to that hearing, a grandmother in her sixties was picking okra in her garden in a small village in South Waziristan, in Pakistan. Her nine-year-old granddaughter was with her. Neither one was an enemy of the United States. Neither one was a threat to any American. Neither one was any kind of militant. In fact, neither really had ever given much thought to the United States.
A U.S. military drone flew overhead. It bombed them. The grandmother screamed and died. Her body was so butchered that the villagers would not allow her own children to see it.
Her granddaughter was permanently injured. She can’t walk anymore.
The grandmother joined the 1000 innocent victims of American drone warfare in Pakistan. A list that includes almost 200 children. By most accounts, between 10 percent and 30 percent of drone victims were guilty of nothing but being in the wrong place, at the wrong time. “Collateral damage” is the bloodless term that’s used.
During that hearing, one broken family got to tell its sad story to Congress, to the world. The son of the victim, Rafiq ur Rehman, spoke first. He and his mother lived in a village with no utilities, far from any road. He is a teacher. His mother was the village storyteller. In the eyes of the villagers, he said in elegy and in eulogy, she was “the string that held the pearls on a necklace.” And now she is gone.
His two children also testified. His daughter, who was with her grandmother that fateful day, spoke about her injuries. One of the children said that they used to pray for blue skies, because they were so beautiful. Now they pray for gray skies, because the drones are absent – temporarily.
Momina Bibi’s family wanted to know why the United States had killed Grandma. I didn’t have an answer. And I still don’t why we kill so many innocent people in the name of our own security. But at least I was able to listen to this family, and learn. I heard their story, every single word of it. I bore witness to this gross injustice, and the pain it brought them.
The hearing room was filled wall-to-wall with Pakistani media. U.S. media, not so much. At the end of the hearing, a Pakistani reporter told me that the Pakistani Government was telling the public that it had no way to stop the American drone attacks.
I said, “the Pakistani Government could stop the drone attacks tomorrow. There is no way that these attacks could take place at all, without the permission of the Pakistani Government.”
Cameras clicked. Reporters scribbled notes, and started dialing on their phones. That was the headline in the next day’s newspapers, all over Pakistan.
For several years before our hearing, there had been a fatal drone attack in Pakistan every two weeks. Shortly after our hearing, they stopped for an entire year. An entire year where blue skies no longer signified danger. An entire year of peace.
I wish I could tell them that that was all over for good. But I can’t do that.
Today, the Republican nominee for President of the United States not only has advocated more drone attacks, but has openly demanded that they be used to kill the children and families of those we suspect to be terrorists. And within our own borders, we suspected that a child was a terrorist because he built a clock for a school project.
Momina Bibi is dead. She will not be telling any more grand, poetic and lyrical stories to her fellow villagers. There is no way to bring her back to life, or even to reassemble what’s left of the parts of her body. But if we’re willing to recognize that what happened to Momina Bibi, what happened to her granddaughter, and what has happened to so many others was wrong, if we are willing to listen and bear witness to these atrocities, and if we are willing to dedicate our energy to stop this from happening ever again, then Momina Bibi will not have died in vain.
Momina Bibi’s family had the courage to come forward, and tell their story. This election cycle, we need to have the courage to listen, and do something about it. We need to vote and speak and spend against anyone who is in favor of, or stays silent on, drones. We need to come together and support champions for peace.
And if we don’t? Then more innocent people will die.
How do you feel about that?
Courage,
Alan Grayson
LikeLike
Pingback: US peace activist Tom Hayden, RIP | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Lockheed militarism at Australian university | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Blackwater boss wants riches from anti-refugee violence in Europe | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: From bloody Iraq war to bloody Fort Lauderdale, USA airport | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Donald Trump’s dangerous warmongering | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Donald Trump administration update | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: United States teenage girls, more suicides | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Pentagon keeps killing Afghan civilians | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Pentagon drones, recruiting sergeants for terrorism | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Google collaborates with United States drone assassinations | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: More military spending than ever | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Stop war between nuclear armed India, Pakistan! | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Irish peace activists against US Afghan-killing drones | Dear Kitty. Some blog