US Drone Attack Raises Uncomfortable Questions for Germany

[The Northerner]

A US drone attack in Pakistan in October is thought to have killed a German citizen. The government of Chancellor Angela Merkel would prefer the case to simply go away, but one parliamentarian is refusing to let it be forgotten.

When a German citizen is killed in a foreign country under mysterious circumstances, one might expect an outcry from politicians and the media. But the case of Bünyamin E., a German of Turkish descent who is believed to have died in Pakistan on Oct. 4, has caused remarkably little fuss in Germany -- partly because the 20-year-old was a suspected terrorist, but also because he was apparently killed by an American drone.

The case is awkward for the German government, as it involves the country's most powerful ally and also raises uncomfortable questions about whether Germany provided support for the targeted killing.

But one opposition politician in particular is determined not to let the government off the hook. Wolfgang Neskovic, a member of parliament for the far-left Left Party, has been pursuing the case and demanding answers from Chancellor Angela Merkel's administration.

The German government "has done everything to conceal the facts of the case," Neskovic told SPIEGEL ONLINE in an interview. "If German citizens are executed in a foreign country -- and that's the only way to describe the targeted killing by the US -- the German government has to provide both the general public and the parliament with sufficient information."

Read more: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,732684,00.html

[gratuitous]

1. Get with the program, Herr Neskovic

Executions make everyone safer, if they're carried out by the "good" guys. Don't you get Fox in Doitch Land? We'll send Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck over to explain it all to you.