Support German Campaign to Remove Ramstein Drone Relay

All lethal US drone strikes are guided via the Satellite Relay Station located on the US Air Force Base Ramstein. More than 10,000 people worldwide have been killed by these drone strikes. The bin Ali Jaber family lost two of its members through a drone strike in Hadramout in Yemen. Now Reprieve and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) have filed a lawsuit against the German government in a German court on behalf of the bin Ali Jaber family. The suit demands that the German government “take legal and political responsibility for the US drone war in Yemen” and “forbid use of the Satellite Relay Station in Ramstein.”

Wednesday, May 27th 2015, 11 a.m., German Bundestag (Meadow) : this case will begin with a hearing before the high administrative court in Cologne.

The military base in Ramstein remains under the legal jurisdiction of the German federal government even though the US Air Force has been allowed to use the base. If illegal activities are conducted from Ramstein -- such as extra-judicial killings – and the US judicial authorities do not condemn these crimes and mandate an end to them, then German justice authorities have a duty to act.

The United States Government claims the right to deploy killer drones everywhere in the world, but extrajudicial killing is against United States constitutional law as well as German and international law. Extra-judicial killing, the killing of 'suspects' is a grievous violation of the United States Constitution. The initiation and prosecution of wars in sovereign countries that do not threaten the US mainland are in violation of international Treaties the United States has signed and which have been ratified by our Congress. These include the United Nations Charter, the Nuremberg Judgement and the Kellogg Briand Pact, all signed into US Law at the time of their ratification.

Extra- judicial killings carried out by armed drones that are guided to their targets and controlled via Ramstein on German sovereign territory are also violations of both German law and international law. In deference to the suffering of drone victims, and to the deep antiwar sentiment of the German people, as citizens of the United States, we stand in solidarity with the bin Ali Jaber family of Yemen, and the urgent demand by German activists that the (German) Attorney General’s Office act to initiate investigations against military personnel working at Ramstein.

The Two-plus- Four-Treaty (the constitutional founding document of the reunited Federal Republic of Germany) grants Germany “complete sovereignty at home and abroad” and emphasizes that “there shall be only peaceful activities from German territory.” The 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War was just celebrated in Europe and Russia. This is a reminder of the devastation caused by war. The German people have not forgotten this.

In accordance with the Treaty and in solidarity with the German people and drone victims everywhere, we demand that:

> The German Attorney General’s Office immediately initiate investigations on the US military base Ramstein against those individuals who are participating in the operation of the Satellite Relay Station.
> The German Government work for the immediate closing of the Satellite Relay Station at Ramstein and abstain from acquiring weaponized drones for the German military.

You can get more information by listening to David Swanson's interview with Andreas Schueller on Talk Nation Radio: http://davidswanson.org/node/4725
and Germany is the Tell-Tale Heart of America's Drone War, Jeremy Scahill's article in the Intercept: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/17/ramstein/