On 24 January 2013, UN Special Rapporteur on Counter Terrorism Ben Emmerson, launched an inquiry "into the civilian impact, and human rights implications of the use drones and other forms of targeted killing for the purpose of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency" in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, and the OPT. The investigation, carried out by ten UN experts, including Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions Christof Heyns, aims at "determining whether there is a plausible allegation of unlawful killing" in those cases where individuals are killed by drone strikes. The results of these inquiries will be presented at UN General Assembly's next session in October 2013.
The Al Haudali family, of Yemeni origin but based in Saudi Arabia for the past 50 years, have informed Alkarama that they had been threatened and harassed by the Saudi authorities since a documentary film aired recently on the satellite channel "Al Asr" talking about the tragic story that this family was subjected to at the hands of Saudi Arabia's Security services. The documentary retraces their arbitrary detention in Saudi Arabia followed by torture and mistreatment, and ending with their forcible deportation to Yemen.
As US President Barack Obama prepares to give a long awaited speech tomorrow regarding his administration's counter-terrorism policies, Alkarama and the Yemeni based NGO "HOOD" today submitted to two UN experts detailed information from investigations the organizations carried out into the US strike, an attempted 'targeted assassination', in Radaa on 2 September 2012 resulting in the death of twelve civilians.