Drone pilots work remotely at American bases, most often in the U.S., sometimes on 11- to 14-hour shifts housed in rooms like shipping containers lined with electronics. They operate based on intelligence from informants but they also carry out so-called “signature strikes,” based on observing suspicious patterns of behavior. They have a list of characteristics, and if a subject on the ground shows a number of them, he could be targeted, a former participant to the drone program told the AP, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the operations.
Mistakes happen from bad intel or misjudging behavior, he said. Rights groups have expressed concern that some of the intelligence may come from prisoners held in jails run by Emirati-backed militias where torture is widespread.
Some of the strikes from 2018 that the AP examined appeared to be mistakes.
On Jan. 1, a drone missile slammed into a farm in Bayda province where 70-year-old Mohammed Mansar Abu Sarima sat with a younger relative, killing both, according to a relative, Mohammed Abu Sarima.
The slain men had just returned from mediating a local dispute. In a country where tribal links are powerful and the justice system nearly non-existent, such mediations are common to resolve conflicts over land or deaths. They involve large gatherings of tribesmen who are often armed, potentially raising drone operators’ suspicions.
“We don’t have any affiliation. They are simple farmers who don’t know how to read or write,” said the brother. “We live in fear. Drones don’t leave the sky.”
Several weeks later, a 14-year-old shepherd, Yahia al-Hassbi, was struck by a drone as he tended goats several kilometers (miles) from a checkpoint that al-Qaida had tried recently to seize. He was killed along with a construction worker passing by at the time, according to relatives and three local human rights workers, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Further east, in Hadramawt province, drones carried out several consecutive days of strikes in March, targeting vehicles on a main highway. Some of the strikes killed al-Qaida militants, according to rights activists in the area.
But others struck down cars carrying people who had fled to the area from a nearby province, Jawf, to escape fighting. A drone’s missile on March 5 killed a 10-year-old boy, Ammer al-Mahshami, and wounded the driver, according to three relatives. Four days later, another car was hit, killing six men and boys, including a 14-year-old and an 18-year-old, travelling to a funeral.
Saleh al-Wahir, the brother of one of the dead, was in a car behind them. “I saw it before my eyes,” he said of the blast. “Bodies were ripped apart.” A report from the Jawf Human Rights office concluded the men were civilians.
