NORTHAMPTON — Adel Al Manthari, a civilian advisor to one of Yemen’s provincial governors, was driving to the village of al-Aqla when a Hellfire missile shot from an American military drone struck his car, killing four of his cousins who were traveling with him to sell a parcel of land.
Today, Al Manthari is in a hospital in Cairo, Egypt, still undergoing surgeries and working to recover from the strike that caused severe burns to the entire left side of his body and broke his hip.
The Northampton nonprofit Ban Killer Drones is raising money online through the website GoFundMe for Al Manthari’s medical treatment and recuperation, and to offset the financial pain that his family has endured.
“Ever since that terrible day, I have fought for justice. But for four years, the U.S. has ignored me,” Al Manthari wrote in a May 25 op-ed published by the New York Daily News. “The Department of Defense will not investigate. Despite overwhelming evidence, it will not accept that four innocent men died in the strike. It will not even acknowledge making a tragic mistake, much less compensate me for my injuries.”
Al Manthari’s medical condition worsened in March. The London-based legal aid nonprofit Reprieve, which assists civilian drone strike victims, connected him with Ban Killer Drones in early May because of U.K. laws restricting charitable payments to individuals.
Ban Killer Drones’ GoFundMe campaign has raised more than $32,000 to date. The original goal was $10,000, but the publicity from articles in The Intercept newspaper and on the website Democracy Now led to a surge in donations.
“When the campaign started, it was very urgent that Adel be flown from Yemen to Cairo because there was not the surgical, medical expertise to help with a problem that was severely constricting circulation in his legs,” Nick Mottern, co-director of Ban Killer Drones said in an interview, adding that Al Manthari could have lost his legs or even his life.
The Yemeni government gave Al Manthari $5,000 so that he and two of his sons could fly to Egypt, and he earns a monthly pension of less than $150. The various groups working to help Al Manthari have asked the Department of Defense to provide the money for his care, but he has received nothing, even though federal law allows civilians injured in non-combat scenarios to submit claims for compensation.
“It’s not clear why the Pentagon is refusing to do that, but it’s not a unique case,” Mottern said.
Reprieve said that Department of Defense officials acknowledged receiving a “complaint and accompanying evidence” from Al Manthari last week, the latest claim that he has attempted to file.
In his op-ed, Al Manthari credits “the generosity of ordinary Americans” with saving his legs by donating to him.
Despite the medical trauma and financial struggles of the past four years, Al Manthari wrote, “I am still here, still breathing, still able to tell you what the U.S. has done to me, my family and my country. That, at least, is a blessing.”
President Joe Biden ended U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led coalition’s “offensive operations” in February 2021, but American counterterrorism operations against groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda have continued.
The Department of Defense issued a statement immediately after the strike that injured Al Manthari, alleging that it had killed four members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
“No civilians were present and therefore none were injured or killed as a result of the strike,” the statement read, according to a 2018 Reuters article.
Weeks later, a new statement announced that “a credibility assessment is being conducted” into allegations of civilian casualties by the media outlet The Daily Beast. Reprieve said that the assessment found no civilian casualties and it was closed last year.
Aisha Dennis, Reprieve’s project manager for matters of extrajudicial executions, said there was no reason to believe that Al Manthari or his cousins were enemy combatants.
“He was really at a senior level” in the provincial government’s Ministry of Health, Dennis said. “We’ve seen evidence that the deputy prime minister signed off on his appointment to that position” and he represented the governor of Abyan at conferences on counterterrorism.
Dennis said U.S. military officials were given a March 2021 report titled “Death Falling from the Sky” that was compiled through an on-the-ground investigation by the Yemeni nonprofit Mwatana for Human Rights and Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Clinic. The report alleges civilian casualties in 12 strikes, including the one that injured Al Manthari, but it does not mention his name.
In April, Reprieve sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin “requesting you urgently re-open the assessment into civilian casualties in this strike and specifically [Al Manthari’s] status as a civilian injured.”
Mottern said it’s “a consistent pattern that they immediately say they’re justified in killing the people.”
Prior to his hospitalization, Al Manthari was unable to prepare his own food or walk around his home without help. He also exhausted his personal savings and money that he had borrowed.
“The money we’ve raised so far will probably cover the cost of various operations he’s going to have. … It’s not clear how long he’s going to need to stay in the hospital,” Mottern said, and the hospital costs rise every day he’s there.
The first surgery in Cairo was on May 12. Mottern said there is at least one more that is “necessary,” but Al Manthari needs to spend more time recovering before he can get skin grafts and a hip replacement.
“He’s going to have more time in the hospital and then he’ll have physical therapy after that, so this will be a very long process,” Mottern said.
Al Manthari’s cousins were Salem, Mohamed, Abdullah and Nasser Al Manthari.
After the strike, Nasser “was still alive and crying out for help,” Dennis said. “He was taken to hospital along with Adel, but he died about two weeks later.”
Salem, according to a witness statement provided to Reprieve by Al Manthari, was a military veteran and a U.S. ally in the War on Terror.
“The U.S. strike killed good people. Salem, Mohamed, Abdullah and Nasser were respectable,” the witness statement reads. “They were respected by everyone in the community — in the home, in the mosque, in the street, people respected them. They had courage, kindness and honesty, they never hurt people, and they were just going about their lives.”
Mottern said that advocates for Al Manthari can contact Sen. Ed Markey and U.S. Reps. Jim McGovern and Richard Neal, all Democrats from Massachusetts.
People can also call Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., “who has already gone to bat for Adel with the Pentagon without much success that we can see,” Mottern said. “Without any success, actually.”
Warren joined her Democratic colleague from Connecticut, Sen. Chris Murphy, in writing a letter to the Department of Defense in March. The letter suggests that there is a “blanket policy” of denying payments for harm to civilians and called for investigations of 12 drone strikes in Yemen between 2017-2019.
“When there is little policy change or accountability for repeated mistakes this grave and this costly, it sends a message throughout the U.S. Armed Forces and the entire U.S. government that civilian deaths are the inevitable consequence of modern conflict, rather than avoidable and damaging failures of policy,” the letter reads.
Brian Steele can be reached at bsteele@gazettenet.com.