00:00:00.000 - 00:00:27.060

Hello, welcome to episode 2 of The War Pod, the official podcast of the Remote Warfare Programme, a London-based research initiative focusing on remote warfare, the trend where states support local and regional forces on the front lines rather than deploying large numbers of their own troops. The Remote Warfare Programme is part of the Oxford Research Group for Peace and Security Think Tank.

00:00:27.060 - 00:00:50.120

I'm Abigail Watson, a Senior Research Officer at the Remote Warfare Programme, and I'll be joined by Megan Carshall-Peterson, the Policy and Research Assistant at the same programme, as well as Jen Gibson of Apreem and Fiona Nelson from ECCHR, to discuss a recent court case in Germany and its implications for the UK.

00:00:51.120 - 00:01:18.420

We recorded some of this podcast in an open space, and so apologies for any background noise. One of the dangers of remote warfare that we have highlighted in our own work is that it lacks the same level of transparency as conventional engagements, and so it is possible that risk-averse governments will use it as a means of avoiding parliamentary and public debate around their operations.

00:01:18.420 - 00:01:44.580

This can create an unnecessarily antagonistic relationship between governments and civil society groups, who, after failing to receive more information about UK operations through political routes, can use litigation as a way to challenge and make public UK actions abroad. Our recent report, Lawful but Awful? Legal and Political Challenges of Remote Warfare and Working with Partners,

00:01:44.580 - 00:02:10.700

argued that if the UK government had a more constructive dialogue with civil society groups, it would allow space for a more open and frank discussion about UK operations abroad. This could allow the government to justify and explain its operations abroad, without being dragged through the courts. A recent case which highlights the danger to the UK if it fails to do this,

00:02:10.700 - 00:02:41.120

happened in March this year, when the Bin Ali Jabba family took legal action against the German government for its support of US drone strikes in Yemen, which killed members of the Bin Ali Jabba family. On the 19th of March this year, the Higher Administration Court in Münster ruled that the German government must take action to ensure that the US respects international law in its use of Rammstein Air Base.

00:02:41.760 - 00:03:07.320

Importantly, the Court's criticisms of the German government's failure to discuss its support to the US, even after so much was already in the public domain, holds an important warning for the UK government. To better understand this case and the implications it holds for countries like the UK, we spoke to Fiona Nelson from ECCHR and Jev Gibson from Reprieve.

00:03:08.040 - 00:03:40.940

First Fiona, can you tell us a bit about yourself and ECCHR's role, both before and during the case? Hi, yes. My name is Fiona Nelson and at the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin, we have been monitoring the issue of the use of armed drones for several years now, as part of our work focusing on accountability for war crimes and other violations of human rights

00:03:40.940 - 00:04:14.160

that occur in the course of counter-terrorism operations. We started working a few years ago on a case of an armed drone attack which killed a German citizen. In Pakistan in 2010. So we were active in that case after the German prosecutor decided to close investigations into that death. And on this particular case we've partnered with Reprieve, who have been doing work also on this issue for several years

00:04:14.160 - 00:04:38.240

and doing excellent work documenting drone strikes in Yemen and in other parts of the world. So when it emerged through the work of some excellent investigative journalists that Germany was playing a very important role in drone strikes in Yemen and other parts of the world, we started looking into options of how we could make a legal intervention to highlight this role

00:04:40.040 - 00:05:02.980

and to discuss some of the very important legal issues that arise. And can you tell me more about the specifics of this case itself? Yes, so the plaintiffs in this case are Faisal bin Ali Jabr, who is an engineer from Yemen, and two other members of his family, Ahmed Saeed bin Ali Jabr and Khaled Mohammed bin Ali Jabr.

00:05:04.560 - 00:05:36.440

The bin Ali Jabr family in August 2012 had gathered in their home village to celebrate a wedding. It was the wedding of the son of Faisal bin Ali Jabr. And on the second day of the wedding celebrations, several rockets were fired from drones and hit two members of their family. So Salim bin Ali Jabr, who was Faisal's brother-in-law, and Walid Abdullah bin Ali Jabr, who was Faisal's nephew, were both killed in that attack.

00:05:38.800 - 00:05:57.700

And Faisal's brother-in-law, who was killed in that attack, was an imam in the area. He was very outspoken against al-Qaeda in the area. And his family members sometimes feared for his life that he might get into trouble with al-Qaeda, and never did they expect that they would one day be killed by a US drone.

00:05:58.340 - 00:06:30.820

So what caused the bin Ali Jabr family to take this case to a German court? So Germany plays an important role in US drone strikes in Yemen and in other countries in the region. There is a US airbase at Rammstein in Germany, which hosts a distributed ground system which is used in drone operations. And it also has US personnel stationed there who are involved in the targeting process.

00:06:30.820 - 00:06:50.000

They're involved in assessing the pictures that come from the drones, and then passing on information about those pictures to the drone pilots who sit in the US. And so Rammstein in a way acts as a hub for the information flowing from the pilots in the US to the drones, and back from the drones to the pilots in the US.

00:06:50.680 - 00:07:18.160

And it would be impossible, as we understand it, for the US to carry out these drone strikes without Rammstein, because relying on satellites alone would involve too much of a time delay. Beaming the data from the drones back to Rammstein in Germany is quicker, because you can then send the information through an undersea cable from Germany through the US,

00:07:18.460 - 00:07:40.980

and you shave a couple of moments off the time involved there, which makes all the difference to those strikes. So that was why, in this case we argued, without Rammstein and without Germany, these drone strikes couldn't take place. And Germany played a key role there. As for the Ben Ali Jaber family, they have been active for a long time,

00:07:41.460 - 00:08:03.920

looking for acknowledgement of what happened to their relatives, acknowledgement that this was a mistake, and they hoped to get some kind of justice through litigation wherever they could. And the Ben Ali Jabers also wanted Germany to take its share of the responsibility for what happened. They also wanted to put a stop to drone strikes like the one that hit their family,

00:08:04.180 - 00:08:31.580

in the hope that other families wouldn't have to go through what they went through. And it was possible to take this case in Germany under the German Basic Law, which is equivalent to the Constitution. Article 2 of the German Basic Law sets out the right to life, and that brings with it an obligation on Germany to not just make sure that by its own actions it protects the right to life,

00:08:31.860 - 00:08:58.100

but also to take action to proactively protect the right to life in situations where there is a threat to someone's right to life that has some kind of a nexus to German territory. And in this case, the nexus is given because Germany approved and tolerates the use of Rammstein Air Base by the U.S. Army. And these constitutional protections extend in certain cases also to non-Germans,

00:08:58.240 - 00:09:13.320

allowing the Ben Ali Jabers to take their case before a German court. Great, thank you. And so you mentioned before that the Ben Ali Jaber family has been trying for a while to take this to court. And I know there's a history as well where they tried in the U.S., but it was rejected as a case.

00:09:13.380 - 00:09:37.660

Can you tell us more about why that happened? Yes, that case was brought in the U.S. by reprieve and lawyers in the U.S. that they worked with. In that case, ultimately the Washington, D.C. Court of Appeals decided that the court cannot decide on whether or not these strikes are legal. The court felt that this would be adjudicating a political question.

00:09:38.560 - 00:10:10.260

And so left this question within the discretion of the U.S. government and the administration. Interestingly, one of the judges in that case, although agreeing with the majority that the court couldn't adjudicate on this, issued a separate opinion in which she set out her feelings that this political question doctrine gives too much deference to the executive. That in theory, Congress should have oversight of the drone program, but that in reality, that's not really happening.

00:10:11.280 - 00:10:37.900

And that, you know, she raised the question, well, if judges don't have the power to oversee this, to oversee the drone program, who will do it? And Faisal Ben Ali Jaber's efforts to litigate in the U.S. was also the subject of a poem by the Canadian poet Anne Carson, which appeared in the London Review of Books a few years ago, which I'd recommend that you, our listeners, seek out. It's called Fate, Federal Court, Moon.

00:10:38.640 - 00:10:59.020

And it describes a little bit the sense of going to a court in the U.S., seeking justice for something that happened in Yemen. And all that goes along with that. That sounds very interesting. I'll definitely try to find that. And why was this specific case successful?

00:10:59.020 - 00:11:34.980

So what made this case different from many of the others that tried to examine European support to U.S. drone strikes, particularly the one that was held on the same day as your own court case, examining the relationship in Somalia between Germany and the U.S.? So the case looking at the drone strikes in Yemen was unique in that its focus wasn't on the drone strikes of the past, but rather on potential future drone strikes. So the crux of the case was the plaintiffs in this case fear that their right to life will be in danger in future.

00:11:35.400 - 00:12:11.020

They fear that they may be hit by a drone in future, given where they live and given the patterns of the past of drone strikes. And that's a key difference to the case that you mentioned that was decided on the same day regarding a drone strike in Somalia. So that case was looking backwards to a particular strike. And the court found that it wasn't satisfied that at that point in time, Germany really knew about the role of Rammstein and how it might be involved in drone strikes in Somalia.

00:12:11.640 - 00:12:38.480

And there was also some evidentiary challenges in that case. The court didn't feel satisfied that the drone strike had happened in the way the plaintiffs had set out. And in the German case, at first instance, that decision was issued a few years ago in the Yemen case. The court went along similar lines to the U.S. court that we just discussed.

00:12:38.760 - 00:12:57.540

So the court felt, yes, Rammstein is used in these drone strikes. Yes, Germany's obligations are engaged here. However, Germany has a broad discretion when it comes to how it wants to deal with this, especially given that this is an area of foreign policy. So very similar to what we saw in the U.S. decision.

00:12:58.420 - 00:13:22.020

And this is exactly the point that was reversed in this most recent appeal decision. So the court here took a very different view, saying that the question of whether or not certain strikes are lawful is a legal question. It's not a political question. A state doesn't have discretion when it comes to the legal assessment of these strikes.

00:13:22.740 - 00:13:45.160

The state does have discretion, of course, when it comes to how it wants to deal with this issue. And that was the key point in the case. Thank you. And so as far as I understand, part of the ruling clarified that the German government's previous findings that there had not been any violations of international law were based on insufficient assessment of the facts and it was not legally permissible.

00:13:45.700 - 00:14:07.360

Can you tell us more about implications of this? Yes, so Germany had argued that it had got assurances from the U.S. that all of its activities in Germany were in harmony with the relevant laws. And Germany argued it had many decades of good cooperation with the U.S., the U.S. was a close ally, and that's all it needed to do. The court said that's not enough.

00:14:07.800 - 00:14:33.780

The court said you have to take into account also the evidence coming out of NGO reports, coming out of investigative journalism, coming out of UN reports even. You have to take this into account when you're making your assessment. And it's not enough to rely on official information coming from the U.S. itself. So I think that has quite important implications potentially for other states as well.

00:14:34.840 - 00:14:46.620

Absolutely. And so this is the first case that's kind of determined that U.S. drone strikes in Yemen are likely in violation of international law. Can you tell me more about what you think the implications are of that finding? Yeah, I think it's very important.

00:14:46.620 - 00:15:18.780

On the one hand, it puts states once again on notice about the assistance that they are providing to U.S. drone strikes in various different parts of the world in terms of state responsibility. Now we know that states need to undertake a thorough analysis of the legality of the strikes and satisfy themselves that these strikes are legal. But it should also send a signal to all of those involved in planning, overseeing, carrying out drone strikes that the law applies to drone strikes. They don't fall outside the law.

00:15:18.780 - 00:15:51.100

They either fall within the international humanitarian law provisions or normal criminal law provisions. And that people involved in unlawful drone strikes potentially leave themselves open to criminal liability as well, depending on the facts of the case. Finally, I would say that it is a reminder that drone strikes are not, as some people would like us to believe, a very precise surgical weapon. It's not a clean form of warfare. It's not.

00:15:52.400 - 00:16:27.600

And I think it's a reminder to all of us to think about how do we want our governments to deal with the problem of, to deal with counterterrorism. We need counterterrorism operations to be scrutinised by parliaments so that citizens can know what's being done in their name. Yeah, I think loads of what you just said then really resonates with our own findings from our report on some of these issues. I'm interested, especially coming from a UK perspective, what the policy implications of this ruling are specifically for Germany.

00:16:27.600 - 00:16:56.320

So what is Germany likely to do, given the case? So, as we record, the decision is not quite final. It is currently open to the parties to appeal. So it may well be that Germany appeals the decision, in which case it will go to the next level in the administrative court system in Germany. But the court did set out a couple of things that Germany has to do now.

00:16:58.540 - 00:17:26.640

So the first is that the general assurances Germany is getting from the US, they're not enough anymore. Germany has to communicate to the US what its understanding of the international law framework here is. And Germany's review of the legal landscape here must be undertaken on the basis of the court's assessment in the judgement, which was a very extensive look at the laws that apply, the prohibition of the use of force, international humanitarian law considerations.

00:17:26.640 - 00:17:58.260

In particular, the issue of properly limiting the group of people you can lawfully target. The court found that the US does not adequately distinguish between who it may legitimately target and which members of which groups it may legitimately target. So that will be part of Germany's review. And the court was quite strong in saying Germany's efforts to date there were utterly inadequate.

00:17:59.800 - 00:18:30.420

The other thing that Germany has to do now on the basis of this judgement is to continue to monitor the facts on the ground. The court found that, yes, currently it seems that there is a non-international armed conflict in Yemen between the Yemeni government and Al-Qaeda, but that could change. If the intensity of the conflict changes. So Germany has to monitor that on an ongoing basis. And as we mentioned, Germany has to take into account reporting coming from NGOs, from journalists, from the UN.

00:18:32.460 - 00:18:56.360

One of the points the claimants had asked for in this case was denied by the court. So the claimants asked that the court order Germany to prohibit the use of Rammstein for drone strikes. And the court refused to go that far and said no. There, in terms of the exact nature of how Germany wants to go about this, is open to Germany's discretion.

00:18:57.740 - 00:19:11.560

So it remains to be seen how exactly they're going to go about this now. But it seems likely that it will come under close parliamentary scrutiny. And if you don't mind, I'm just going to jump in with a quick question there. So you mentioned this review that they have to do of international law.

00:19:12.140 - 00:19:29.940

Is that going to be public, do you think, or is that a process they're going to keep internal? It's okay if you don't know. I'm just wondering about the probabilities of them, actually. Because in the UK it's very close down in regards to releasing information about this. And I'm wondering how, in Germany, if there's more transparency in regards to releasing reviews like this of international law.

00:19:31.700 - 00:19:58.820

Yes, I think it's important that Germany's assessment of the legality is made public. So that it can be discussed and debated and scrutinized. And so people know what exactly is the basis of how they're dealing with this issue. And I think that will fall under what Germany should do to publicly set out what it feels are the standards that apply on international law.

00:19:59.140 - 00:20:16.700

And that's also very important for the system of international law. That states take a public position, so I would say that would be key. Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. I feel like we're going to have to get you back in a year to reassess what's actually happened. And I think it's also important to highlight ECCHR's other work in this area.

00:20:16.880 - 00:20:53.300

So if you could talk a bit about what you're doing in other European countries around the assistance of them to US strikes. Yes, so currently colleagues at ECCHR are working on the issue of the assistance provided by Italy to the US drone program in Libya and potentially other areas. The Italian case is interesting because the drones are physically stationed on Italian territory, on Sicily. But there is no transparency about what the basis is for the agreement between Italy and the US on this.

00:20:54.920 - 00:21:22.560

To what extent Italy has to oversee or authorize specific strikes happening in Libya. And these are key questions in terms of trying to determine is Italy's action here in accordance with the law. And so currently we are in the middle of freedom of information request litigation in Italy to find out what the basis of this is. Again, super interesting work that we're going to have to get you back for on a frequent basis.

00:21:23.180 - 00:21:42.300

But for now, thank you so much. This has been really useful. Thank you very much. Thank you. Great. So it's really interesting to hear the drone's perspective on this and how the case has implications for the policy there. To hear a little bit more about the UK perspective, we now have Jen to talk about what's going to happen here.

00:21:42.460 - 00:22:03.340

So if you mind introducing yourself and telling us a bit about your work with this case. Hi, I'm Jennifer Gibson. I head up our drones work here at Reprieve. Reprieve is a UK charity. It also has offices in New York. We've been working on the drones issue now for, oh goodness, almost a decade, not quite.

00:22:04.120 - 00:22:27.940

We first started investigating the drone strikes in Pakistan in 2010 and the drone strikes in Yemen shortly thereafter, which is how we first met Faisal bin Ali Jaber, one of the claimants in this case. We came across him during a press conference in Yemen and a meeting we were holding with those affected by the drone strikes. He came up to us and started telling us his story.

00:22:29.200 - 00:22:49.860

We took on his case and became determined to try to get him some answers for both the strikes that had killed his family members, but also answers to why the strikes were happening in the first place. Am I right in thinking that you originally brought this case in the US for him as well? We actually started his case outside the courtrooms.

00:22:50.060 - 00:23:12.220

We took Faisal to Washington DC in November of 2013. We attempted to meet with political leaders in both the Senate and also actually the National Security Council to discuss his case. Those meetings did occur, but he didn't get the answers he was seeking. In fact, after his trip, the headline in the New York Times was,

00:23:12.380 - 00:23:33.880

a drone victim met with silence during his visit to DC. That kind of, for me, sums up in one sentence the drone program to date on the side of the US. Faisal then went back to Yemen, and about six months after that visit, the Yemeni intelligence services tried to deliver bags of cash to him.

00:23:34.480 - 00:23:44.980

Consequently marked US dollar bills. Kind of, here's the money, go away. Stop talking. Faisal doesn't want money. His family doesn't want money. They just want answers, and so he declined the money.

00:23:46.880 - 00:24:05.460

The following year, in 2015, President Obama for the first time ever, not only acknowledged a drone strike in Pakistan, but apologized to the families of two Western hostages who were killed in that strike. We then approached the administration asking for a similar apology.

00:24:06.180 - 00:24:21.840

There was no apology forthcoming for the Pakistanis or the Yemenis, and so Faisal brought suit in the US courts, seeking just that, an apology, and an acknowledgment that his relatives were innocent. And looking forward, what does this mean for the UK?

00:24:22.120 - 00:24:34.160

I know you've been working on these issues for a decade, and you've had similar cases brought before other European countries, such as the Norcon case in the UK in 2013. 2012.

00:24:34.480 - 00:24:48.880

2012. How is that different? What does this court case mean for the other European countries? I think it's interesting to note that Faisal's case in Germany is very different from the case we brought in the US.

00:24:49.280 - 00:25:05.600

His case in the US was very much about the strike that killed his brother-in-law and his nephew, Salman Waleed. The case in Germany is all about prospective action, stopping strikes from further harming his family and other families in Yemen illegally.

00:25:05.600 - 00:25:28.320

The case of Norcon in 2012 has elements of both in it. Norcon's father, Malik Daud Khan, was a tribal leader in Pakistan who was killed in a drone strike on March 17, 2011. He'd been leading a tribal jirga, which is kind of a dispute resolution gathering,

00:25:29.100 - 00:25:45.880

and that day in question the dispute was over chromite mines and who owned the chromite mine, which tribe owned it. The US fired several missiles that day and killed 41 tribal elders and individuals who were watching the jirga.

00:25:46.360 - 00:26:01.740

Malik Daud Khan was one of them. Shortly after the strike, there were reports in the newspapers quoting anonymous UK officials saying that they provide geolocational intelligence to the US drone program for strikes in Pakistan and that they were proud of it.

00:26:02.360 - 00:26:22.560

We then brought a judicial review on behalf of Norcon with our partners WeDay and a team of barristers here in the UK asking for disclosure of the policy on which that intelligence sharing was taking place and kind of asking, what's your policy for sharing intelligence for the use of lethal force?

00:26:24.320 - 00:26:37.500

In that instance, the court came back at the appellate level and refused to hear the case on very similar grounds to why Faisal's case didn't proceed in the US. The idea that this was a political question,

00:26:38.520 - 00:26:56.300

that hearing the UK courts hearing a case that involved relationship with the US might embarrass that relationship, might embarrass the UK. They invoked something called the act of state and barred, effectively, actions like this going forward

00:26:56.300 - 00:27:14.980

where the UK is partnering with another state. Looking forward from that case to now and the possible dangers that the UK can face, do you think there will be any looking over

00:27:15.980 - 00:27:32.700

and reconsidering the secrecy that it now holds over its relationship with the US? Will it reconsider the dangers it faces based on the case in Germany? The UK's position to date has been pretty much neither to confirm nor deny what it is or isn't doing.

00:27:32.900 - 00:27:47.700

We find ourselves in this kind of black hole of knowing things are happening but not being able to get any concrete answers as to what or where or how or under what legal basis. It often uses the phrases,

00:27:48.880 - 00:28:03.020

it's a matter for the states who are involved and we're confident the action is being taken in accordance with international law. The UK can't really say that anymore. You now have a German court, a German appellate court,

00:28:03.200 - 00:28:17.760

saying these strikes are illegal. There is sufficient evidence now to indicate that the strikes taking place in Yemen carried out by the US, even if inside of an armed conflict, are illegal. They're not distinguishing between civilians and combatants.

00:28:18.220 - 00:28:34.420

They're not abiding by the Geneva Conventions and customary international law. That's huge because it's going to be really hard from this point on for the UK government to say, we didn't know they were illegal, we didn't know the US was taking illegal strikes.

00:28:36.300 - 00:28:53.780

The evidence now is quite overwhelming and it's very similar to why the court ruled the way it did in the German case, which was to say, you know what, in 2012 you may not have known this but you absolutely do know now who's being targeted

00:28:53.780 - 00:29:06.380

and that there are problems with that targeting process and yet you continue to not ask the questions you need to be asking. The UK really needs to take heed of that. They need to think very carefully about whether more,

00:29:06.380 - 00:29:16.620

or at least some safeguards if they don't have any, are put in place in that relationship with the US and that the actions they're engaging in at places like Men With Hill, a base right here in the UK,

00:29:17.860 - 00:29:31.240

are not making them complicit in the illegality going on in Yemen. What do you think is the response from the US, both in regards to whether you've heard anything official from them in response to the findings in the court,

00:29:31.480 - 00:29:46.020

but also whether you think they'll have to change anything as a result of the findings in the court? As far as I'm aware, there's not been an official response by the US government. I think there's been reports that officials say they will look into the case.

00:29:46.760 - 00:30:02.260

I think in terms of how the US behaves going forward, the US needs to very quickly look at the changes to the rules of engagement that have led to a massive increase in strikes in Yemen, that have led to a massive increase,

00:30:02.260 - 00:30:15.120

a corresponding increase in the number of civilian casualties. We've seen a real scale back under the Trump administration of what limited safeguards were put in place at the end of the Obama administration.

00:30:15.300 - 00:30:35.060

At a very minimum, those safeguards need to be reinstated and the program needs to be pulled back into kind of line in restraint. But more broadly, we really now need to sit back. I say this as an American and someone who kind of straddles the Atlantic at the moment.

00:30:35.620 - 00:30:49.500

The US and its allies need to step back and start looking at whether this program is effective and what the effects of this program are on their broader objectives in keeping both the US and the UK safe.

00:30:49.920 - 00:31:10.840

Killing civilians does not make the US and the UK safer. Drones that terrorize entire communities do not make the US and the UK safer. And secrecy certainly does not make the US or the UK safer and it undermines the very democracies we uphold

00:31:10.840 - 00:31:26.000

as kind of beacons of light to these countries. And so we need a real discussion to be started around what our countries are doing in our names, how they're doing it and whether it's really achieving the objectives they're setting out to achieve.

00:31:26.460 - 00:31:48.200

Yeah, and I think that moves the discussion away from the legal questions into something might be lawful, whether or not it is, is another question. But the policy implications are the thing that sort of defines whether or not they should be doing it. Is it even effective, whether or not it's legal, put into one side?

00:31:48.200 - 00:32:12.980

And I think it would be interesting to see if you have any thoughts on what the current efforts are and what the policy implications of this recent case should be in terms of what the UK should be doing substantively to address these concerns. I think the UK needs to start asking questions if they're not already.

00:32:13.280 - 00:32:27.620

And all the indications are that they're not asking those questions. They need to start asking if they don't already know who's being targeted, what the rules of engagement are, where the intelligence is coming from, how the intelligence is running.

00:32:27.860 - 00:32:44.540

What we see time and again with these strikes is that this kind of old adage that the drone is the most precise instrument we've seen in warfare, that very well might be true and it might be that the drone hits the X if you tell it to hit the X. But if the intelligence telling it which X to hit is wrong,

00:32:44.540 - 00:33:03.140

it's regularly hitting the wrong target. And that's what we see happening again and again. Strikes being taken on poor and incorrect intelligence leading to the deaths of innocents. And then that mistake being compounded by the lack of transparency and accountability on who's been killed.

00:33:03.600 - 00:33:19.860

And that becomes really critical for the UK government to understand better because it also means you're not learning from your mistakes. If you're not tracking who you're actually killing and you're not taking on board countervailing intelligence post-strike, this is, I think you've got the wrong guys.

00:33:20.760 - 00:33:34.820

You're also then not correcting the intelligence sources that are feeding them and the mistakes will continue. And so the UK government is heavily involved in this US drone program. Make no mistake about it, the Germans are involved through a base called Ramstein.

00:33:35.340 - 00:33:51.540

The UK is not only involved through bases like Manuel Hill, but they are directly involved in things like tasking targets and having British special ops in the operations room in Yemen helping identify targets. In embedding soldiers in units that might be taking strikes.

00:33:52.060 - 00:34:11.080

We know, for example, they embedded British soldiers in US units to take strikes in Syria at a time when parliament hadn't authorized those strikes. So we really need the UK government to first and foremost tell the UK public what it is they're doing and how involved they are.

00:34:11.320 - 00:34:24.240

And then start asking really serious questions from its ally about what they're doing and how they're doing it. Absolutely. Great. Well, I actually think that's it. The question's from us. Thank you very much for listening.

00:34:28.040 - 00:34:39.240

Thank you very much to both Fiona and Jen for that really interesting discussion. And thank you very much for all of our listeners who tuned in. We hope you enjoyed the discussion as much as we did. For those of you who want to read more in depth about the topics we covered,

00:34:39.700 - 00:34:56.620

we put links to our research and publications that we've mentioned in the episode notes below. If you want to stay up to date with the remote warfare program and the Oxford Research Group's work, please subscribe to our newsletter by clicking on the bottom at the top of the page. You can also follow us on Twitter. Our handles are at ORGinfo and at remote underscore warfare.

00:34:57.480 - 00:36:00.220

You can listen to all our previous episodes of our podcast free of charge by following the link at the top of the page. We look forward to you joining us soon. Thank you very much. Thank you.

00:36:01.640 - 00:36:03.800

Thank you.