Remember this from October?
Faisal bin Ali Jaber came to recognize that in his case, justice was not realistic. The most he could hope for from the American government that killed his family in a drone strike was an apology, much as the families of two wrongfully killed westerners received from Barack Obama.
But the answer came on Wednesday from the Justice Department: no.
Guardian
After all, he got paid $100,000 for them.
Since the money didn’t come with any acknowledgement that the strike even occurred, let alone an apology, Jaber visited Washington in November 2013. He even got a meeting at the White House, as the Guardian reported at the time. Still, Jaber left without answers for his family’s deaths. A gambit in a German court to hold the US drone campaign’s foreign partners accountable also went nowhere.
But on Monday, his lawyers at the human-rights group Reprieve wrote to the Obama administration with a new offer. Jaber would settle his case, attorney Cori Crider wrote to Barack Obama, in exchange for “an apology and an explanation as to why a strike that killed two innocent civilians was authorized”.
[...]
The US president, who is globally synonymous with drone strikes, personally expressed his “profound regret” for an errant US drone strike that killed Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto, an American and an Italian whom al-Qaida militants held hostage on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
[...]
But on Wednesday, the Justice Department tacitly rejected the offer. Instead, it argued to Judge Ellen Huvelle that the drone strike – or, as they put it, the “alleged operation” – was beyond her power to scrutinize.
He wasn't asking for the judge's apology.
As it has in previous cases seeking redress for drone strikes, the lawyers said “the government could not confirm or deny” the strike took place; and added that Jaber was not the proper person to seek redress in US court for any such strike.
Would be difficult for the dead people, though.
“There is no good reason that the president stood up in front of the world with the Lo Porto and Weinstein families to say sorry for the US’s tragic mistake, but can’t do so for a Yemeni man.”
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
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