Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 00:23:49 +0200
Inside the U.S. Dirty War in Yemen with Jeremy Scahill, Nasser al-Awlaki,
Sheikh Fareed
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EXCLUSIVE Nasser al-Awlaki to Obama: Why Did You Kill My U.S.-Born Son,
Grandson in Drone Strikes?
From drone strikes to the massacre at al-Majalah, secret U.S. military
actions inside Yemen are exposed in "Dirty Wars: The World Is a
Battlefield," the new documentary film by Jeremy Scahill and Rick Rowley
opening today. Scahill's book by the same name was published in April. We
continue our conversation on Yemen with Scahill and two key Yemenis profiled
in the film: Nasser al-Awlaki, who lost his son, cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, and
16-year-old grandson to U.S. drone strikes; and Saleh bin Fareed, the Yemeni
sheikh and tribal leader who was one of the first people to arrive at the
site of the U.S. attack of al-Majalah that killed 45 civilians in 2009.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: In this Democracy Now! exclusive, we bring you Nasser
al-Awlaki, the father of Anwar al-Awlaki, grandfather of Abdulrahman
al-Awlaki. Both of these men, Anwar al-Awlaki and his son, were killed in
U.S. strikes over the last two years, now admitted, after something like 600
days, by the U.S. government that they were responsible for their deaths.
Sheikh Saleh bin Fareed also joins us, a Yemeni tribal leader and uncle of
Anwar al-Awlaki. Jeremy Scahill is in the studio with us, the investigative
reporter who has written the book Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield and
is the central figure in the film by the same name that's being released
today around the country, in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, and then
beyond, Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield.
Jeremy, you've spent a good deal of time in Yemen with the al-Awlaki family
investigating the various attacks.
JEREMY SCAHILL: First of all, I just want to make clear here that
Abdulrahman Awlaki, this 16-year-old who was killed in a drone strike, was
not with his father at the time that he was killed. He was killed two weeks
later while sitting in an outdoor restaurant with his teenage cousins and
other youth from their tribe. He had run away from home to try to find his
father, and his father was killed before he could find him. In fact, his
father was killed nowhere near where he was. He went-Abdulrahman went to the
place in Shabwa where there had been repeated drone strikes aimed at killing
his father. His father gets killed, and Abdulrahman is stuck in this
village, because at the time the Arab Spring uprisings were happening and
there were protests against Ali Abdullah Saleh, the U.S.-backed dictator of
Yemen, and he was unable to return to his home, where he was living with
Nasser Awlaki and his wife Saleha, because there was fighting in the south
of the country. So he's waiting and staying with his relatives, and then
he's killed in this drone strike. And when he was killed, anonymous U.S.
officials claim that he was a 21-year-old, that he was somehow with al-Qaeda
figures or that he may have actually been a militant himself. And all of
this was being litigated anonymously, and then the family produced his birth
certificate showing that he had just turned 16, that he was born in August
of 1995 in Denver, Colorado.
I have spent the past year or more trying to get to the bottom of why this
young man was killed. I've spent time with his family, with his friends,
with people who knew him well. There is not a shred of evidence to indicate
that this boy had anything to do with terrorism whatsoever. He was being
raised by his grandparents and had dreams of going to university in the
United States. For me, the answer to why he was killed says a lot about who
we are as a society. And the Obama administration has refused to come
forward and say why this 16-year-old American citizen was killed. Eric
Holder, the attorney general, used the phrase, "He was not specifically
targeted." What does that mean? It's some kind of Orwellian term that was
probably focus-grouped in the CIA. You know, it sounds like this
hyper-legalistic term. Was he killed in a signature strike, these drone
strikes that are aimed at people whose identities we don't know and against
whom we may have no evidence that they participated in criminal or terrorist
activity? You know, this is sort of like Precrime, like Minority Report,
where we are-we are targeting people even though we don't know their exact
identities. A senior-a former senior official in the White House told me
that John Brennan, the current director of the CIA, believed that
Abdulrahman Awlaki may have been intentionally targeted, perhaps based on
bad intelligence. But this administration, I think, has an obligation to the
American people to explain this.
On the case of Anwar Awlaki, just to respond to a couple of things that
Nasser and Sheikh Saleh bin Fareed said, I think that many Americans would
watch sermons of Anwar Awlaki and find them deeply offensive. You know,
Anwar Awlaki, toward the end of his life, was openly calling for armed jihad
against the United States, was calling on Muslims within the military to
attack other soldiers, similar to the Nidal Hasan in the Fort Hood massacre.
But what I think is important for people to understand is, this man was
never indicted, was never charged with a crime. I'm willing to concede that
he may have been involved with plots against the United States. But if
President Obama is sincere in saying that he would have preferred to
prosecute him, why didn't someone call Saleh bin Fareed, who is one of the
most influential tribal leaders in the south, a British-educated man, an
international businessman, who would have had a serious stake in this, and
say to him, "Here's the evidence against Anwar Awlaki. We want him handed
over." It gives lie to the claim by President Obama that they would have
preferred to capture him or put him on trial, the fact that these tribal
leaders were not even approached or presented with any evidence. So, you
know, this isn't about so much who Anwar Awlaki was; this is about who we
are as a society. When you have the constitutional law professor, Nobel
Peace Prize-winning Democratic president asserting, now openly, that the
United States has the right to assassinate its own citizens off of a
declared battlefield without even presenting evidence that they're involved
with a crime, then I think we have a serious problem in this country that
needs to be confronted.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy, I want to go to a clip of your new film that's opening
today, Dirty Wars, when you interviewed Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, who
sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
JEREMY SCAHILL: When there is a lethal operation and a high-value person is
killed-the president, of course, acknowledged that we killed-
UNIDENTIFIED: He can't-
JEREMY SCAHILL: Huh?
UNIDENTIFIED: He can't confirm that there have been any lethal operations
outside of a war zone.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Has there been any legal review of the potential for lethal
operations against American citizens?
SEN. RON WYDEN: Is that classified?
It's important for the American people to know when the president can kill
an American citizen and when they can't. And yet it is almost as if there
are two laws in America. And the American people would be extraordinarily
surprised if they could see the difference between what they believe a law
says and how it has actually been interpreted in secret.
JEREMY SCAHILL: You're not permitted to disclose that difference publicly.
SEN. RON WYDEN: That's correct.
AMY GOODMAN: That's Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, who sits on the Senate
Intelligence Committee, being questioned by Jeremy Scahill in his new film
Dirty Wars. Jeremy?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. I mean, the state of oversight today for the kill
program is that senators, like Ron Wyden, go into a secure classified
intelligence facility. They're provided with only some memos that the White
House has determined it's willing to share with members of Congress from the
Intelligence Committee. And they are not allowed to bring writing utensils
in. They can't bring paper in. They can't bring anything with a battery into
these rooms. And they read the administration's justification for conducting
these strikes. And then they're not allowed to tell anyone what they've seen
when they're in that room.
So, you know, for me, the stakes here are very high, because we have an
assertion now, openly and publicly, by the president of the United States
that he believes that we have the right to conduct these operations in any
country where there is a potential threat against U.S. persons. And, you
know, I believe that President Obama should be required to present evidence
that American citizens are involved with criminal or terrorist activity
before sentencing them to death. And let's remember, the vast majority of
the victims are not U.S. citizens; they're Yemenis and Pakistanis and
Somalis and others around the world.
AMY GOODMAN: Nasser al-Awlaki, you are suing the U.S. government right now
for the deaths of your son and your grandson. What are you asking for?
NASSER AL-AWLAKI: Well, you know, the first time we sued the United States
government was in August 2010, when we tried with the help of CCR and ACLU.
We had a case against the government, and we wanted them to stop the
targeting of Anwar al-Awlaki. Unfortunately, the judge did not really rule
on this, because, I mean, he said that I was not qualified to, you know,
make the suit against the government, for technical reasons, whatsoever.
Then we tried again after the killing of Anwar and Abdulrahman. And,
thankfully, ACLU and CCR, they helped me again to put the case against
United States officials.
And what I am looking for is really justice from the U.S. system of justice.
What I am looking for is for accountability. You see, you know, the American
government is making this news by piecemeal. You know, before, they said
this is secret government documents. Now they are releasing, and they are
talking about the killing of Anwar and his son and the others. Well, what we
are looking for-and there will be a court hearing on July. What we are
asking for is just that we know exactly why Abdulrahman was killed.
AMY GOODMAN: I want-
NASSER AL-AWLAKI: Was it intentionally or not? I believe it was-it was
intentionally. Regarding Anwar, we want to know why they went and killed him
before they have a chance to capture him or to convince him to come for a
trial. And so, you know, this is what I am looking from the American system
of justice.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill, before we end, I wanted to turn to another
attack, and that's the case of Majalah.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, the first time that President Obama authorized any
strikes against Yemen was December 17th, 2009. Yemen had been bombed by the
United States once before that under President Bush in November of 2002. And
President Obama was expanding the authorities for the Joint Special
Operations Command and the CIA to strike in countries beyond Afghanistan and
elsewhere around the world. And in this first missile attack, the U.S. used
cruise missiles and cluster bombs on this small Bedouin village in the-in
Majalah, in Abyan province. And they said that they were targeting an
al-Qaeda leader in an al-Qaeda training camp. And it turned out that the
bombing killed 46 people-14 women and 21 children. And the Yemeni government
actually took responsibility for the strikes and said that its own air force
had conducted it and that it was a successful attack against an al-Qaeda
base. And the United States began conspiring with the Yemeni regime to bomb
Yemen and then have the Yemenis take responsibility for it. And General
David Petraeus, the CENTCOM commander, was revealed in the WikiLeaks cables
to have hatched this plot with the Yemeni dictator, Ali Abddullah Saleh. But
this was one of the most gruesome attacks that's been conducted over the
past three years in Yemen, shredding human beings, children and women, in
this strike that they said was aimed at an al-Qaeda camp.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Sheikh Saleh bin Fareed, you were among the first to get
to the site after the attack. Can you describe what it is you saw?
SALEH BIN FAREED: But allow me first, for a minute, just to explain about
Anwar. When I met President Ali Abdullah Saleh, I asked him, "Do you have
anything against him?" He said, "No." I said to him, "Then why do you keep
him? You kept him for almost quite two years." He said, "We kept him in jail
because the Americans asked us to do that." "Do you have anything against
him?" He said, "No." And then I said, "OK. Have the Americans given you any
proof?" He said, "No. They failed. We wrote to them hundreds of times. We
called them many times. And they could not give us even one line against
Anwar." Then I said, "OK, if that is the case-
AMY GOODMAN: Sheikh Saleh bin Fareed, we only have one minute left in the
broadcast.
SALEH BIN FAREED: -then why you will listen to them?"
OK, anyway, regarding al-Majalah massacre, in fact it was, I mean, a big
shame and big blame on the Americans and on the American government and on
our government in Yemen. I was one of the first people to arrive there. What
I have seen, I have not seen in my life, and I don't think I will ever see,
even if it is like a third World War. Those people were living in a small
valley only two kilometers from the tarmac road. We drove easily. We reached
after five-10 minutes to the site, easily. And our minister of interior at
that time, when they asked him, "Why you did not capture them?" he said,
"They live in high mountains like Tora Bora. We could not reach them," which
is big false. And when we reached there, there were hundreds and then
thousands of people. We saw the flesh of the bodies of those people mixed
with the meat of the cows and sheep and goats. Honestly, we could only find
very, very few whom we could recognize. And we-it was mixed with hundreds of
sheep and goats. And, I mean, they were all mixed together, I mean, with
blood. And they got-they were bombed with about six or seven huge rockets
from the-
AMY GOODMAN: Sheikh Saleh bin Fareed and Nasser al-Awlaki, I want to thank
you both for being with us. We're so sorry the broadcast has ended. We will
continue the conversation after, post it at democracynow.org. Dirty Wars,
which covers this, opens today in Washington, D.C., in Los Angeles and in
New York at the IFC and Lincoln Plaza.
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