German court to rule on claim over US strikes in Yemen
The survivors say they were there for a wedding of a male family member and eating dinner when they heard the buzz of a drone and then the boom of missile attacks that claimed multiple lives.
A ruling in favour of the plaintiffs could have ground breaking implications regarding Germany's responsibility towards third countries in international conflicts.
The two men, supported by the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), argue that Germany is partly responsible for the attack because the strike was aided by signals relayed from the Ramstein base in the west of the country.
"Without the data that flows through Ramstein, the US cannot fly its combat drones in Yemen," according to the ECCHR.
"The German government must put an end to the use of this base -- otherwise the government is making itself complicit in the deaths of innocent civilians," said Andreas Schueller, programme director for international crimes at the NGO.
The plaintiffs first took their case to court in 2014, arguing that Germany had a responsibility to ensure the US military was respecting international law in using the Ramstein base.
'Trusting dialogue'
The case was initially thrown out, before the higher administrative court in Muenster ruled in favour of the plaintiffs in 2019.
However, the government appealed and a higher court overturned the decision in 2020, arguing that German diplomatic efforts were enough to ensure Washington was adhering to international law.
Advertisement
In a hearing scheduled for Tuesday morning, the constitutional court must now decide what conditions are necessary for those affected abroad to sue the German state for the protection of their right to life, according to the ECCHR.
This includes whether data transmission alone is enough of a connection to German territory for Germany to be held responsible.
Ahead of the latest proceedings, which opened in December 2024, the German defence ministry said Berlin was "in an ongoing and trusting dialogue" with the United States about its activities at Ramstein.
The government has repeatedly obtained assurances that drones are not launched, controlled or commanded from Germany and that US forces are acting lawfully, the ministry said.
Washington has for years launched drone strikes targeting suspected Al-Qaeda militants in Yemen, an impoverished country that has been torn by fierce fighting between its beleaguered Saudi-backed government and Iran-backed rebels.
READ ALSO:
German military leaders re-examine reliance on US-made weapons
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Int'l Business Times
an hour ago
- Int'l Business Times
Trump UN Envoy Pick Chastised For Discussing Bombing On Signal
President Donald Trump's former national security advisor Mike Waltz on Tuesday defiantly defended his use of a group chat to discuss military plans as he faced accusations of lying during a hearing to be US ambassador to the United Nations. The editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine said in March that Waltz had mistakenly added him to a chat among top US officials on commercial messaging app Signal about the imminent US bombing of Yemen. Senator Cory Booker of the rival Democratic Party accused Waltz of deliberately maligning the journalist by falsely saying that he infiltrated the group. "I've seen you not only fail to stand up, but lie," Booker told Waltz. "I have nothing but deep disappointment in what I consider a failure of leadership on your part," Booker told Waltz. Waltz pointed to guidance under former president Joe Biden that allowed the use of Signal, which is encrypted, and said the White House has not taken disciplinary action. "The use of Signal was not only authorized, it's still authorized and highly recommended," Waltz said, while insisting the chat did not exchange "classified" information. Senator Chris Coons, another Democrat, was incredulous over his explanation and voiced alarm that the White House has not taken any corrective action. "You were sharing details about an upcoming airstrike -- the time of launch and the potential targets. I mean, this was demonstrably sensitive information." Waltz, a former congressman and special forces officer, survived little more than three months as national security advisor before Trump on May 1 replaced him with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is juggling both jobs. Waltz did not deny he has kept taking his salary, saying he was not "fired" and still served as "an advisor." Senator Jacky Rosen, raising the salary issue, contrasted Waltz's actions with his vow to "root out waste and unnecessary overhead at the UN." Trump has aggressively cut US assistance overseas and pulled the United States out of several UN-backed bodies. Waltz vowed to press for reforms at the United Nations, accusing it of "anti-Semitism" and "radical politicization" for criticisms of Israel and the United States, even though the United States is the organization's largest funder. The United Nations, he said, has "drifted from its core mission of peacemaking." "The UN's overall revenue has quadrupled in the last 20 years, yet I would argue we have not seen a quadrupling of world peace," Waltz said.
DW
an hour ago
- DW
US drone war: Berlin not absolved of all responsibility – DW – 07/15/2025
Germany's top court has decided that the US air base in Ramstein may be used for lethal drone strikes, but Germany also has a duty to protect. Does the "right to life and physical integrity" guaranteed in Article 2 of Germany's Basic Law also apply when people are killed far away from Germany by another state with at least indirect German assistance? The Federal Constitutional Court, the equivalent to the US Supreme Court, was tasked with answering this tricky question on Tuesday. The case was brought by two men whose relatives were killed in a targeted US drone strike in Yemen in 2012. The technical infrastructure of the US air base in Ramstein was also used in the strike. In this specific case, the lawsuit was dismissed as unfounded. However, the ruling is not a complete carte blanche for potentially lethal drone missions in the future. According to the court's official reasoning, Germany must also protect fundamental human rights and the core norms of international humanitarian law abroad. However, the court also granted the federal government considerable leeway to determine its foreign and security policy. The mandate now announced is subject to two conditions: A sufficient connection to German state authority and the serious risk that international law could be systematically violated. According to the Constitutional Court, this was not the case with the drone strikes in Yemen. The court ruled that the US took sufficient account of the protection of civilians in its fight against international terrorism, and referred to "legitimate military targets." However, innocent people were killed alongside the suspected terrorists in the attack controlled from Ramstein, which brought criticism from legal scholar Paulina Starski of the University of Freiburg on the TV channel : "If they don't know exactly who they are attacking, they have to assume that it is a civilian." That is why targeted killings carried out by state actors are often highly problematic from a humanitarian and international law perspective. If the US Air Force could guide its missiles remotely from US territory straight to their targets, it would not need logistical support from its Ramstein airbase. But direct radio links between the US and Yemen are not possible, due to the curvature of the Earth. This is why signals are redirected via Ramstein, which makes the base indispensable for attacks in the Middle East. And they are very simple: A drone pilot sits in Florida, connected to the Ramstein hub via fiberoptic cables, guiding the deadly weapon to its target. The lawyer representing the unsuccessful plaintiffs from Yemen, Andreas Schüller, called the Constitutional Court's decision painful and disappointing. But he added that the duty to protect now formulated also provides guidelines for future conflicts: "Following today's ruling, there may be situations in which violations of human rights and international law abroad are brought before German courts." The federal government reacted with relief. State Secretary Nils Schmid of the Ministry of Defense emphasized that compliance with international law was always a priority. At the same time, he said, the ruling gave German security policy "the necessary leeway" to be a reliable you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter, Berlin Briefing.
DW
2 hours ago
- DW
After huge US cuts, who pays for aid in the Middle East now? – DW – 07/15/2025
For the first time in 30 years, in 2024, some of the world's biggest spenders on aid and development cut funding. Now aid organizations in the Middle East are forced to seek new, potentially more demanding, donors. Ask around various civil society organizations working in the Middle East and the answer is always the same. "Nobody really knows what's happening," one project manager running a Syria-based project told DW about the US cuts in aid funding. "They haven't put a complete stop to it yet so we're just spending the money on a monthly basis and hoping for the best." "We still don't know if we're going to get the funding we were promised this year," the founder of an Iraqi journalists' network in Baghdad said. "We probably won't be able to pay some of our journalists. Right now, we're approaching other organizations to try to replace the money." Neither interviewee wanted their names published because they didn't want to criticize their donors publicly. They are not alone. Since US President Donald Trump took power, he has slashed US funding for what's known as "official development aid," or ODA. Often simply called foreign aid,the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Developmentdefines ODA as "government aid that promotes and specifically targets the economic development and welfare of developing countries." ODA can be bilateral — given from country to country — or multilateral, where funds are pooled by an organization like the UN, then disbursed. The US is not the only country cutting ODA. Even before what insiders described as the US' "chaotic" budget cuts, reductions in ODA were a longer-term pattern. Global ODA fell by over 7% in 2024, as European nations and the UK also reduced ODA in favor of channeling more money into defense. Last year marked the first time in nearly 30 years that major donors like France, Germany, the UK and the US all cut ODA. In 2023, countries in the Middle East got around $7.8 billion (€6.7 billion) out of the $42.4 billion (€36.3 billion) the US spent that year. That is why, Laith Alajlouni, a research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Bahrain, wrote in March, "the effects of US aid cuts … will be felt deeply in the Middle East, where key US partners continue to rely heavily on US assistance to meet their military and economic needs." Between 2014 and 2024, the US pledged around $106.8 billion to countries in the region. Israel gets just under a third of that, although much of the money is earmarked for military purposes. But for other countries, funds from the US were equivalent to a significant portion of their national income, Alajlouni pointed out. Now funding for emergency food and water in Sudan, medicines in Yemen, children's nutrition in Lebanon, and camps for the displaced, including families allegedly connected to the extremist "Islamic State" group in Syria are all are at risk, Alajlouni argues. Other countries, like Jordan and Egypt, are heavily reliant on foreign funding for "economic development" to keep their ailing economies afloat, he noted. It remains unclear exactly how much Middle Eastern countries will lose due to ODA cuts. Last month, researchers at Washington-based think tank, the Center for Global Development, tried to calculate the fallout. "Some countries are projected to lose large amounts of ODA simply because of who their main donors are," they noted, "while others are projected to lose very little." For example, Yemen will likely see its ODA reduced by 19% between 2023 and 2026. In 2025, its three biggest donors, via the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or UNOCHA, were Saudi Arabia, the EU and the UK. Somalia, on the other hand may lose as much as 39%. Its main donors, via UNOCHA, were the UK, the EU and the US. "It is clear that in the short term, the shortfall in aid funding will not be closed," Vincenzo Bollettino, director of the resilient communities program at Harvard University's Humanitarian Initiative in Boston, told DW. "In the mid-to-long term, it's likely there will be a tapestry of different forms of aid." Part of that will be a larger number of states "providing aid and development assistance where it aligns with their own political objectives," Bollettino predicts. Russia's main agency for international cooperation, Rossotrudnichestvo, recently announced it would restructure to be more like USAID and will open outposts in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. But at just $70 million annually, Rossotrudnichestvo's budget is comparatively small. Chinese money could be another alternative to US and European funding. "China has positioned itself as the US' greatest competitor in global development," experts at US think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, warned in July. But China isn't all that interested in the Middle East, experts point out, and is more engaged in Southeast Asia and Africa. "Neither Russia nor China have played traditionally significant roles in the international humanitarian aid system and this is unlikely to change anytime soon," Bollettino explains. Much more likely donors in the Middle East will be the wealthy Gulf states, says Markus Loewe, a professor and the coordinator for research on the Middle East and North Africa at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability, or IDOS. Over the last two decades, four Gulf states — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait — have been internationally significant donors. "For example, Saudi Arabia is already offering substantial support to Syria," Loewe told DW. "They have been supporting Lebanon to quite a degree and they would definitely be ready to pay a lot of the costs of reconstruction in Gaza, provided there is an acceptable agreement on a ceasefire." Most of that ODA has gone to Arab countries, although Qatar and Kuwait have also funded work in Turkey, Afghanistan and some African countries. Hardly any Gulf money goes into what are called "pooled" funds like those run by the UN. Most is bilateral, from country to country, because the Gulf states tend to use their ODA in a more transactional way. That is, as a diplomatic tool where it ties into different Gulf states' often-competing foreign policy aims. "Aid recipients who are considered politically important for Gulf donors tend to receive more aid," Khaled AlMezaini, a professor at the UAE's Zayed University, wrote in a recent analysis. For example, despite waging war on parts of Yemen from 2015, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were also the country's biggest donors. But as Harvard's Bollettino points out, ODA is not meant to be political. That goes against basic humanitarian principles of neutrality and impartiality. "The essential problem with instrumentalized aid is that it's just as likely to be a catalyst of conflict and violence as a source of peace and security," he argues. "The so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation — where 'humanitarian aid' being delivered to starving civilians has resulted in hundreds of Palestinians being killed — is a case in point." To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
