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For Immediate Release
May, 23 2014, 09:27am EDT
Contact:
Reprieve press office: alice.gillham@reprieve.org.uk/ +44 207 553 8160
UK Government Faces Legal Action Over Failure to Investigate BT Drones Link
LONDON
Legal charity Reprieve has threatened legal action against the British government over its failure to investigate the role of UK telecoms giant BT in facilitating covert US drone strikes in Yemen.
BT has earned an estimated $23m from a US government contract to supply key communications infrastructure between RAF Croughton - a US military base in Northamptonshire - and Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, the secret base from which armed drones reportedly carry out lethal strikes in Yemen. According to the US military, American forces stationed at RAF Croughton provide "global strike operations."
Legal investigations have begun on behalf of Mohammed al-Qawli, a Yemeni civil servant who lost his brother, a primary school teacher, and cousin, a 20-year-old student, in a drone strike in January 2013. They follow a July 2013 complaint by Reprieve to the UK government watchdog, the National Contact Point (NCP) for the Organisation for Economic Development (OECD) Guidelines. That complaint was rejected after the NCP said it had no duty to "conduct research or interrogate" BT.
Mr al-Qawli recently described the moments after he was told about the strike:
"I went to the site of the strike, some 20 minutes away, to find the car still burning and people from the nearby village gathered around it. The smell of burning flesh was overwhelming. We had to go to a nearby village to get water to put the fire out and we had to collect the body parts ourselves. The memory remains etched in my mind and haunts me to this day."
Lord Livingston, who was Chief Executive of BT at the time the complaint was launched, is now Minister of State at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), where the NCP sits. Secretary of State for BIS Vince Cable has told Reprieve that Livingston "has overall responsibility" for the NCP.
The US' secret drone programme is carried out by the CIA and US Joint Special Operations Command in countries with which the US is not at war, and has killed hundreds of civilians in Yemen and Pakistan. After the strike that killed Mr al-Qawli's relatives, the Yemeni government admitted that both men were innocent civilians.
Kat Craig, Legal Director of Reprieve, said: "Human rights abuses may happen at the hands of governments, but corporations' fingerprints are too often found at the scene. The OECD guidelines are a recognition of the role corporations play. They should be at their strongest at the intersection of the murky world of business and the secretive and covert drone programme.
"But this case shows that the regulator of these guidelines is toothless and that the guidelines themselves are meaningless. The drone strike that killed an innocent primary school teacher in a country with whom we are not at war may not have been possible but for the assistance of big business. If one of the most recognised British companies has blood on its hands, don't we deserve to know?"
Reprieve is a UK-based human rights organization that uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantanamo Bay.
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"What we are seeing now is a slow, brutal process of mass starvation and death by the denial of basic necessities," the senator said, calling for an end to U.S. complicity in the humanitarian disaster.
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"Today marks 68 days and counting since ANY humanitarian aid was allowed into Gaza. For more than nine weeks, Israel has blocked all supplies: no food, no water, no medicine, and no fuel."
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) not only highlighted those conditions in a speech on the Senate floor Thursday but also called out the fact that the worsening humanitarian crisis "gets very little discussion here in the nation's capital or in the halls of Congress," even though Israel has spent the past 19 months destroying Gaza with armed and diplomatic support from the United States.
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The senator took aim at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Palestinian territory, and key members of his administration.
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"The time is long overdue for us to end our support for Netanyahu's destruction of the Palestinian people."
Noting that Israel's actions run afoul of U.S. and international law, Sanders said: "Starving children to death as a weapon of war is a clear violation of the Geneva Convention, the Foreign Assistance Act, and basic human decency. Civilized people do not starve children to death. What is going on in Gaza is a war crime, committed openly and in broad daylight, and continuing every single day."
Since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, the Israeli assault on Gaza has killed more than 52,000 Palestinians. According to local officials, at least 57 Palestinians have died from malnutrition and a lack of adequate medical care. Many more are struggling to find food and water, particularly since Israel ramped up its blockade on March 2.
"With Israel having cut off all aid, what we are seeing now is a slow, brutal process of mass starvation and death by the denial of basic necessities. This is methodical, it is intentional, it is the stated policy of the Netanyahu government," said Sanders. "Without fuel, there is no ability to pump fresh water, leaving people increasingly desperate, unable to find clean water to drink, or wash with, or cook properly. Disease is once again spreading in Gaza."
Families in Gaza "are now surviving on scarce canned goods," and "the starvation hits children hardest," the senator continued. "With no infant formula, and with malnourished mothers unable to breastfeed, many infants are also at severe risk of death."
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Sanders has moved to block some U.S. weapons sales under both the Biden and second Trump administrations, but his efforts have not garnered enough support in Congress to succeed. Still, people across the United States and around the world have condemned the Israeli assault on Gaza as genocide—and Israel faces a case on the subject at the International Court of Justice.
The senator spotlighted Israel's latest plan for Gaza, Operation Gideon's Chariots, which involves "conquering" and indefinitely occupying the territory, and ethnically cleansing the region of its Palestinian inhabitants, who would be force into the south.
"This would be a terrible tragedy, no matter where in the world it was happening or why it was happening—whatever the causes of it might be. But what makes this tragedy so much worse for us in America is that it is our government, the United States government, that is absolutely complicit in creating and sustaining this humanitarian disaster," he said.
"It didn't just happen," Sanders emphasized. "Last year alone, the United States provided $18 billion in military aid to Israel. This year, the Trump administration has approved $12 billion more in bombs and weapons."
For months, U.S. President Donald Trump "has offered blanket support for Netanyahu," the senator said. "More than that, he has repeatedly said that the United States will actually take over Gaza after the war, that the Palestinian people will be driven—forcibly expelled—from their homeland, and the United States will redevelop it into what Trump calls 'the Riviera of the Middle East,' a playground for billionaires."
Citing unnamed sources, Reutersreported Wednesday that "the United States and Israel have discussed the possibility of Washington leading a temporary post-war administration of Gaza," sparking global criticism and comparisons to the U.S. misadventures in Iraq in the early 2000s.
US, Israel discuss possible US-led administration for Gaza Yes, cause the American occupation in Iraq famously went really well www.reuters.com/world/middle...
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— Nick Cunningham (@nickcunningham.bsky.social) May 7, 2025 at 11:55 AM
"This war has killed or injured more than 170,000 people in Gaza. It has cost American taxpayers well over $20 billion in the last year. And right now, as we speak, thousands of children are starving to death," Sanders detailed. "And the U.S. president is actively encouraging the ethnic cleansing of over 2 million people."
"Given that reality, one might think that there would be a vigorous discussion right here in the Senate: Do we really want to spend billions of taxpayer dollars starving children in Gaza?" the senator bellowed. "You tell me why spending billions of dollars to support Netanyahu's war and starving children in Gaza is a good idea. I'd love to hear it."
Sanders then made the case that the U.S. Senate isn't having that debate "because we have a corrupt campaign finance system" that allows organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to set the agenda in Washington, D.C. He pointed to AIPAC and its super political action committee spending over $100 million in the latest election cycle.
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