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Emran Feroz is an Afghan-Austrian journalist currently based in Stuttgart, Germany. He is regularly writing from Afghanistan, often focusing on the Middle East, Central Asia, drone warfare, refugee policies and human rights. Emran is writing in both German and English. His work has already appeared in international media outlets such as Al Jazeera, The Intercept, Alternet, The Atlantic or the New York Times and in various German and Austrian news papers and magazines.
Trump Is Killing Civilians. Is He Just Doing What He Promised?
According to different reports, recent US airstrikes in Syria killed at least 106 civilians, including at least 42 children. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an organization based in Britain that tracks the Syrian war, said that one of the strikes had hit a building housing the families of IS fighters.
During this election campaign, Donald Trump already suggested to kill the families of IS fighters.
"Take out their families," he said then.
For that reason, it seems that President Trump is just fulfilling what he promised.
However, this doesn't change the fact that the people his bombs killed were innocent civilians. Some legal experts already said that if the families of IS fighters were being targeted deliberately like Trump said he would, it would violate the Geneva Conventions.
“Family members of combatants would be considered civilians,” David Bosco, an associate professor at Indiana University and author of a book on international law, said. “Targeting them intentionally would be illegal.”
Nevertheless, as Bosco points out, there is little chance of an international trial. The International Criminal Court does not have jurisdiction in Syria nor the United States, making any potential trial a “distant hypothetical”, according to him.
But at least this wouldn't change the reality that Donald Trump can be — de facto — described as a war criminal.
