Amy Goodman interviews Shahzad Akbar a Pakistani lawyer on Democracy Now. The video is appended. Akbar represents families of people killed in U..S. drone strikes in the tribal areas.
At first Akbar was denied a visa to enter the U.S. to speak at the recent Drone Summit in Washington D.C.. However he did get one at the last minute and so was available to attend.
The summit was organized by several human rights groups to discuss the steep rise in drone attacks during the Obama administration and other issues. One human rights group Reprieve estimates up to 2,283 people altogether have been killed in drone strikes in Pakistan since they began way back in 2004.
Just as the summit was set to meet Obama announced a new widening of targets in Yemen. The new so-called signature strikes do not rely on identification of a target listed on an approved list but relies upon suspicious behavioral patterns to pick out targets.
Akbar discusses how such signature strikes often are based upon faulty intelligence and end up killing innocents. Medea Benjamin of Codepink also is in the video. For more see this site.
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