A court case wrapped up in Germany yesterday with a quiet ending.
Months ago....a couple of Yemeni guys used German resources (lawyers, foundation help, etc) to bring a case up.....accusing the US military operating in Germany.....of using Germany to launch drones into Yemen and kill Yemeni folks. The center of their court argument was 'flight-data' which was relayed onto the control people and thus violated German law (note, it's Yemeni folks who said it violated German law, not actual Germans).
So the court up in Koln heard the argument and yesterday said that there was no case.
This court decision was based on a German effort to inform the US government that the air base in question.....had to behave in accordance with German and EU laws. The response from the US was "yes, we agree". Beyond that point, the Germans don't have any device nor any intention of directing the use of troops on German property.
There are exceptions to the episode. If an American Army unit wants to cut down trees on a post.....they have to ask the local forest manager for permission. If flooding control or measures need to be implemented on a air base.....the local German government will be involved. If some radical folks try to storm the gate of some base.....German cops will be involved and arrest the folks with various charges.
The discussion here is simply 'flight-data'. The Yemeni guys had a lousy one-star marginal argument over this episode. They got some encouragement from various political groups in Germany to launch a legal court episode against the US military in Germany. The court looked over this argument and probably realized the 'encouragement' side to the court episode.....and stopped the mess before it got crazy.
The end? No. I would speculate that either ARD (Channel One) or ZDF (Channel Two) will try to create some five-minute news piece out of this, and speculate on how the court got the thing wrong. Some political thugs from German intellectual side will chat up on the evil drones, and a one-star marginal story will peak out at the two-star level.
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