The lawsuit identifies U.S. President Barack Obama, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and former CIA Director David Petraeus as defendants.
Salem, an imam, and Waleed, a police officer, were killed Aug. 29, 2012 in the eastern Yemeni village of Khashamir when Hellfire missiles were fired from a US drone near the local mosque, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit cites that President Obama’s decision in April to publicly disclose that a separate American strike, on a Qaeda compound in Yemen, had inadvertently killed two Western hostages, an American and an Italian.
The lawsuit notes that Mr. Obama said at the time that the hostages’ “families deserve to know the truth” and that the United States was willing “to confront squarely our imperfections and to learn from our mistakes.”
The White House’s apology for accidentally killing two al-Qaida hostages in April while ignoring hundreds of Yemenis killed by US drones sends a message that non-western civilians’ lives don’t matter, civil liberties advocates argued.
Last month a German court rejected the family's claim that Berlin was partyly responsible for their deaths, by allowing the US to run an operations unit at the Ramstein base.
Representatives for the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The lawsuit named U.S. President Barack Obama, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and former CIA Director David Petraeus, as well as several other unnamed people, as defendants.
Obama’s recognition in April of the hostage killings was an unprecedented admission for the US government, which typically keeps information surrounding its drone policy shrouded in secrecy.
While the Obama administration has long insisted that the lethal use of drones occurs with as much precision and intelligence available, the revelations were a rare moment in which the White House conceded the CIA does not always know whom it specifically seeks to kill.
In 2013, Obama set tighter rules on drone strikes and promised greater transparency for the programme.
The United States has been conducting counter terrorism operations in Yemen for years as it targeted al Qaeda there with the support of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour
This comes after yesterday when US dron strike in Yemen kill a family of seven .
