By: Marjorie Cohen
US commanders who provided military support to the Saudi-led coalition that bombed civilians in Yemen in August by helping and inciting war crimes under customary international law, part of US law, can be charged.
The 500-pound MK-82, which was dropped by the coalition on Aug. 9, killed 51 people, including 40 children. The bombing is a war crime.
“They came to the hospital in cars and ambulances,” Marta Rivas Blanco, an ICRC nurse at the Al-Talh Hospital in the Guardian, wrote: “Dozens of children with a range of horrific wounds.” “Some were screaming, some were scared, Many of them went directly to the morgue. ”
Lockheed Martin, one of the leading US defense contractors, built the bomb, which was part of a US-Saudi arms deal last year.
Assistance and incitement to a war crime,
In accordance with customary international law, assistance and incitement to a war crime require three elements: 1) a person or entity committing a war crime; (2) another actor has committed an act which has had a significant impact on the commission of the war crime; and (3) the other offender is aware that the act will, or has a high probability of assistance, contribute to the commission of the war crime. All three elements were present in the 9 August bombing.
First, the coalition committed a war crime. Murder and targeting of civilians constitute serious violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The US War Crimes Act defines serious violations of Geneva as war crimes.
Targeting a bus of children in a crowded market is a war crime. The Saudi government called it a “legitimate military action,” claiming that it targeted “the Houthi leaders who were responsible for recruiting and training young children and then sending them to the battlefield.”
Second, US commanders provided the means to commit the war crime. The purchase of the bomb was part of an arms deal with Saudi Arabia approved by the US State Department. In May 2017, on his first overseas stop after taking office, Trump signed a $ 110 billion arms deal with the Saudi king in Riyadh.
Third, the US military knew that supplying the bomb to the armed forces was likely to lead to a war crime. A similar bomb killed 155 people in a funeral parlor in Yemen in October 2016.
After the 2016 bombing, the Obama administration, in reference to “human rights concerns”, banned Saudi Arabia from selling precision-guided military technology. The ban was rescinded in the same month as Trump’s deal in Riyadh, and the US government authorized the delivery of laser-guided Paveway munitions to Saudi Arabia.
US aid facilitates more war crimes
The bombing of a school bus on 9 August was one of more than 50 air strikes on civilian vehicles carried out by the coalition so far in 2018. Amnesty International has documented 36 coalition air strikes, many of which may constitute war crimes.
On April 23, 2018, Saudi aircraft dropped cluster bombs manufactured by Raytheon on a wedding in Yemen, killing 22 people, including children. When cluster bombs explode, small bomblets are scattered. Some remain unexploded and explode when people accidentally step in or pick up children from the ground. These weapons are prohibited under the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which prohibits all use, stockpiling, production and transfer of cluster munitions.
The Saudi war on Yemen can not continue without support from the United States and the United Kingdom, according to Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution.
US military assistance to the coalition includes supplying Saudi aircraft and the United Arab Emirates with fuel in the air, logistical support and intelligence sharing. But US intervention in the war escalated late last year when a team of green caps came secretly to the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
At least 6,385 civilians have been killed and 10,000 wounded since the war broke out. Air strikes from the Saudi-led coalition accounted for more than 60 percent of civilian casualties.
Yemen has one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world. At least 22.2 million people – and almost all Yemeni children – need humanitarian assistance and more than a million people are suspected of having cholera. However, the coalition restricts aid and imports from food, medicine and fuel.
On March 15, 2018, the UN Security Council issued a presidential statement calling for full humanitarian and commercial access and all parties to comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law.
