Op-Ed

A Drone Killed My Grandson

16-year-old U.S. citizen in Yemen.

In an op-ed in The New York Times Thursday, Nasser al-Awlaki, a university official and politician in Yemen, demanded answers from the U.S. about the killing of his 16-year-old grandson, a U.S. citizen, in 2011. “Nearly two years later, I still have no answers. The United States government has refused to explain why Abdulrahman was killed,” Awlaki writes. Abdulrahman was the son of the American-Yemeni imam Anwar al-Awlaki associated with an attempted bombing on Christmas Day 2009. But there was no evidence his son was involved in terrorist activity, and the Obama administration has faced outrage for killing a U.S. citizen without charges. “The government has killed a 16-year-old American boy. Shouldn’t it at least have to explain why?”