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Pakistani Lawyer Representing Victims of Drone Strikes Prevented From Speaking in U.S.
From Code Pink and CCR:
National — Pakistani lawyer Shahzad Akbar has been invited to speak at an International Drone Summit in Washington DC on April 28, but the U.S. government is failing to grant him a visa.
The Summit is organized by the peace group CODEPINK and the legal advocacy organizations Reprieve and the Center for Constitutional Rights. Akbar, co-founder of the Pakistani human rights organization Foundation for Fundamental Rights, is important to the Summit because of his work providing legal aid to victims of CIA-operated drone strikes. Akbar filed the first case in Pakistan on behalf of family members of civilian victims and has been a critical force in litigating and advocating on victims' behalf.
While Akbar has traveled to the United States in the past, he has not been granted permission to return since becoming an outspoken critic of drone attacks in Pakistan that have killed hundreds of civilians. He was previously invited to speak about drone strikes at Columbia University in New York, but he never received a response to the visa application he filed in May 2011. One year later, he is still waiting for a response, and he has been unable to get an answer from the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad as to why his application is being held up.
“Denying a visa to people like me is denying Americans their right to know what the U.S. government and its intelligence community are doing to children, women and other civilians in this part of the world,” Akbar said. “The CIA, which operates the drones in Pakistan, does not want anyone challenging their killing spree. But the American people should have the right to know.”
The CIA’s secret drone program has killed hundreds of people in Pakistan with no due process and no accountability. Akbar represents families whose innocent loved ones have been killed and maimed in these drone attacks.
“Shahzad is the voice for these poor tribal people who have had no recourse,” said CODEPINK co-director Medea Benjamin. “It’s outrageous that our government is trying to keep him from speaking at the Drone Summit.”
“The Obama administration has already launched six times as many drone strikes as the Bush administration in Pakistan alone, killing hundreds of innocent people and devastating families,” said Leili Kashani, Advocacy Program Manager at the Center for Constitutional Rights. “By refusing to grant Shahzad Akbar a visa to speak about this abhorrent reality in the United States, the Obama administration is further silencing discussion about the impact of its targeted killing program on people in Pakistan and around the world.”
The Drone Summit’s organizers vow to keep pressuring the U.S. government to grant Akbar a visa.
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government has increasingly deployed unmanned drones in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa. While drones were initially primarily used by the U.S. military and CIA for surveillance, these remotely controlled aerial vehicles are currently routinely used to launch missiles against human targets in countries where the United States is not at war, including Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. As many as 3,000 people, including hundreds of civilians and even American citizens, have been killed in such covert missions.
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Like Obama and his LYING, FASCIST PENTAGON, who routinely blackmail, manipulate puppet Dictators for the U.S., YEMEN'S
dictator, supported by the Fascist Obama, ordered a journalist arrested on trumped up charges for exposing Obama's War crimes. The
Pentagon's Fascist Lies, and Obama's fascist duplicity BACKFIRED ON THEM, when world opinion demanded his realease, which Yemen's dictator
was about to do,UNTIL OBAMA personally called the YEMEN DICTATOR, to support Amerikan Fascism, and keep the journalist in prison.
This is similar to OBAMA blackmailing Spain's judicial system who were about to indict BUSH OFFICIALS FOR WAR CRIMES, only to
have the FASCIST PRESIDENT use Western class hierarchies, police and military links to protect THE WAR CRIMINAL BUSH, AND
HIMSELF. Similarily, THE FASCIST STATE DEPARTMENT routinely acts like the ATLANTIC COUNCIL, OCEANA corrupt , despotic
elites and BLACKMAILS, THREATENS, BRIBES, officials to keep social activists out of the FASCIST U.S. EMPIRE.
With the exception of the Journalist, Tapper, most of the CORPORATE MEDIA PROPAGANDISTS, did not ask, nor want to inform
the public about Obama's personal, FASCIST INTERVENTION, in framing a journalist, then preventing his release, and Obama's
PRESS SECRETARY was forced to admit he knew nothing about the matter but would come back with an answer, once he had one.
Has any sorry assed corporate media shill followed up on this matter, REGARDING OBAMA'S CRIMINAL, FASCIST INTERVENTION,
like the Fascist State Department interventions against the truth????