Lawsuit seeks to enforce freedom of information request on decision-making process that led to controversial killings of up to 25 civilians and one Navy Seal

The Trump administration is being taken to court in an effort to force the release of documents connected to a military raid on Yemen that killed up to 25 civilians and left one Navy Seal dead.



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The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit on Monday to enforce a freedom of information request it filed in March for records on the decision-making process that led up to the special forces raid on 29 January on a suspected al-Qaida base.

Donald Trump, who approved the raid after dinner with generals and defence secretary James Mattis, called the mission “successful”, but the residents of al Ghayil village in al-Bayda province told the Bureau of Investigative Journalism that 25 civilians, including nine children were killed, many as they tried to escape the gunfire on the ground and from helicopters.

The victims included US citizen Nawar al-Awlaki, the eight-year-old daughter of the al-Qaida propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a September 2011 US drone strike in Yemen.

A Navy Seal, William “Ryan” Owens, was killed in the course of the operation, the first US soldier to die in combat under the Trump administration.



Human Rights Watch found that at least 14 civilians had been killed, nine of whom were children, and called for a government investigation. However, a US military assessment found that there had been between four and 12 civilian deaths and that there were no lapses in judgment or decision-making. The head of US Central Command, Gen Joseph Votel, said he saw no need for further investigations.

“Some of the information the government did release –including its estimate of the number of civilian casualties – conflicts with the estimates of a human rights organisation and independent journalists,” the ACLU lawsuit argues. “This raises questions about the legal and evidentiary standards by which the government is abiding and the information gathered as a result of the government’s official investigations.”

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The lawsuit seeks documentation on the “legal and factual bases for the raid”, how the government came to approve it, and in particular “why certain areas of Yemen were ‘temporarily’ designated as areas of active hostilities”.

The mission had been proposed to the Obama White House, as a means of striking at the heart of al-Qaida in the Arabian peninsula, but it had not been approved in part because of concern about the potential for civilian casualties. Under Obama administration guidelines, any military operation outside active combat zones could only get approval if there was “near certainty” there would be no civilian casualties. The New York Times reported that Trump gave the Pentagon permission to declare parts of three provinces of Yemen to be an “area of active hostilities”, which allowed the special forces raid to proceed under looser constraints.

The national security council did not respond to a request for comment.