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Representative Ilhan OmaR, The Minnesota Democrat joined a growing chorus of elected officials and advocates urging the Pentagon to make amends for a Somali family following a The Intercept investigation into a 2018 US drone attack who killed a woman and her 4-year-old daughter.
Omar, a Somali American, asked the Pentagon to contact the family of Luul Dahir Mohamed and Mariam Shilow Muse and offer compensation. “To date, the Department of Defense has refused to even respond to or acknowledge repeated communications from Luul and Mariam’s family, much less offer condolence payments,” Omar told The Intercept. “We owe it to the victims’ families to recognize the truth of what happened, provide the compensation that Congress has repeatedly authorized, and allow independent investigations into these attacks.”
Omar added that the US drone program is fundamentally flawed and has killed thousands of innocent people in 20 years. “When we say we stand for human rights and peace, we must mean it,” he said.
Omar’s call to action follows a similar line lawsuit from Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., earlier this month and a December 2023 Open Letter from Two Dozen Human Rights Organizations – 14 Somali and 10 international groups – calling on Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to compensate the family for the deaths.
The April 1, 2018 attack in Somalia killed at least three, and possibly five, civilians, including luul and her daughter. A previously secret U.S. military investigation, obtained by The Intercept through the Freedom of Information Act, acknowledged the deaths of a woman and child in the attack but concluded that their identities may never be known. This reporter traveled to Somalia and spoke to seven members of Luul and Mariam’s family. For more than five years, they have attempted to contact the U.S. government, including through the U.S. Africa Command’s online civilian casualty reporting. portalbut never received a response.
Last month, the Department of Defense released its long-awaited “Civilian Damage Mitigation and Response Instruction,” or DoD-I, which laid out the Pentagon’s “policies, responsibilities, and procedures for mitigating and responding to civilian harm” and led the army to “respond to people and communities affected by US military operations,” including “expressing condolences” and providing appeals ex gratia payments to the closest relatives.
“Congress appropriates $3 million each year specifically to make payments to civilian victims and survivors of U.S. operations,” Omar said. “However, those funds have never been used in Somalia, despite confirmed civilian deaths there.”
“Families around the world live in fear and terror that they or their children will be killed in a drone attack.”
Pentagon spokeswoman Lisa Lawrence said the Defense Department is “committed to mitigating harm to civilians” and “responding appropriately if any harm occurs,” but could not say whether Austin even intends to contact with Luul and Mariam’s family. “I don’t have that information,” she told The Intercept.
“Thousands of civilians have been killed in unexplained attacks over the past two decades,” Omar said. “Families around the world live in fear and terror that they or their children will be killed in a drone attack.” He told The Intercept that “the Biden Administration has made commendable progress on civilian harm in our drone program, but this attack and its consequences are further proof that there is simply no way to carry out the program safely.” human.”
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