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In December 2009, a drone strike in North Waziristan killed 35-year-old Asif Iqbal and 18-year-old Zaneullah Khan. A year later, Kareem Khan, the brother and father of these two men, filed a $500 million lawsuit against the American government.
The drone strike was apparently targeting Haji Omar, a commander in the Pakistani Taliban.
The news reports alleged that the target of the strike had been a Taliban commander, Haji Omar, but Khan insisted that Haji Omar was nowhere near the village that night. Khan also told us that the same Taliban commander had been reported dead several times by the media. "How many times could the same man be killed?," Khan asked.
Khan's son had just graduated from high school, and his brother was a teacher at the local school. Khan's brother taught his students that education was far more powerful than weapons. The drone strike that killed their teacher taught the students a very different lesson.
On February 5th, just days before he was to travel to Europe to testify about the effects of drone strikes on civilians in Pakistan,
Khan was kidnapped in Pakistan. At least some of the twenty men who seized him were dressed in police uniforms, but the
police deny any knowledge of his kidnapping. A Pakistani court has ordered the government to produce Mr. Khan by February 20 or explain the reasons for his arrest.