Jacobs, Warren, Van Hollen Call on DoD to Release Information on Possible Civilian Casualty from Recent Syria Airstrike
U.S. Representative Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), a member of the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees, and U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, expressing concerns that a recent May 2023 U.S. airstrike in Syria may have killed a civilian. Senators Warren and Van Hollen and Representative Jacobs are asking DoD to publicly release as much of their internal investigation into the airstrike as possible.
“The Department of Defense’s internal investigations have found ‘confirmation bias’ in selecting targets can lead to the U.S. military killing civilians they incorrectly believed to be legitimate targets,” wrote the lawmakers. “The publicly reported timeline of events related to the May 2023 strike indicates that DoD may still be suffering from deadly confirmation bias and resisting the consideration of outside information, and ‘raises questions about how thoroughly CENTCOM has implemented the military’s civilian harm mitigation policy.’”
“CENTCOM waited two weeks to open a preliminary CCAR (Civilian Casualty Credibility Assessment Report) investigation despite knowing of multiple credible reports that alleged this strike killed a civilian, and did not announce it became a 15-6 investigation until June 28… it is unclear why CENTCOM waited for weeks to fully investigate this matter, and why the tweet announcing that CENTCOM had targeted a senior AQ (Al Qaeda) leader remains online without recognition that this incident is now under investigation,” continued the lawmakers.
“We are also concerned that this strike may reflect a continued pattern of confirmation bias when DoD conducts airstrikes. Under customary international law, it is well established that when there is doubt as to whether a person is a civilian or a combatant, the person shall be considered a civilian. In deciding to take the strike, we are concerned whether CENTCOM failed to question its assumptions and to appropriately presume civilian status in the absence of clear evidence that the targeted individual was a combatant, exacerbating the risk of misidentification and civilian harm,” they continued.
Given these serious concerns, Senators Warren and Van Hollen and Representative Jacobs are calling on DoD to publicly release as much information related to the investigation as possible, and they are calling on DoD to answer a set of questions about its broader policies relating to civilian harm prevention, mitigation, and response by July 19, 2023.
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