What did these women do to be targeted by these damn American drones?’ A question desperately asked by the son of Dhabia Ali Ahmed Al Taisi. He had found his mother torn apart into ‘pieces of meat’ after a US drone targeted her on a December afternoon in 2017. She and other Yemeni women had been gathering in a house in the area of Yakla, but when Dhabia (63 years old) walked outside she was, for completely unknown reasons, immediately targeted and torn apart. Shrapnel was scattered around and also killed Dhabia’s pregnant niece, Hajra Saleh Ahmed Al Taisi (33 years old). Hajra’s husband recounted how the shrapnel had penetrated ‘her neck and went out of her back’, killing her and the fetus, while their 8 year old son stood by helpless. ‘People’s lives are almost paralyzed’, Dhabia’s son continued, ‘they are afraid, and their movements are restricted especially after the increase in American air strikes and the mistakes [in] targeting defenseless citizens’.
Until today, the deaths of Dhabia and Hajra have not been investigated, leaving the bereaved with a sense of indignation and constant anxiety over the next drone strike.
The objective of this publication is to provide a bottom-up perspective of what legal concepts such as ‘transparency’, ‘the protection of life’, and the ‘right to remedy’ entail for drone victims. Drawing on testimonies, this publication explains the utmost importance of the law for the individuals and communities who have fallen victim to the use of armed drones.
