On Tuesday, 22-year-old Farea al-Muslimi, an American-educated Yemeni, testified before a Senate subcommittee about the Hellfire missile that had hit his family’s village of Wessab just six days earlier. Al-Muslimi was here in the U.S. when the missile hit, but immediately heard from friends and family back in Yemen.
“They called and texted me that night with questions I could not answer,” al-Muslimi says: “Why was the United States terrifying them with these drones? Why was the United States trying to kill a person with a missile when everyone knows where he is and he could have been easily arrested?”
In his testimony, al-Muslimi says he hates Al Qaeda and the way his religion has been distorted, and professes his love for America. But, he says, “Wessab first experienced America through the terror of a drone strike. What radicals had previously failed to achieve in my village, one drone strike accomplished in an instant: there is now an intense anger and growing hatred of America.”
Watch al-Muslimi’s full testimony:
