The Obama administration has agreed to pay €1 million to the family of an Italian aid worker who was killed in a US drone strike in 2015.
The agreement is the first known deal of its kind between the US government and the family of a victim of a drone strike, following the president's admission last year that Giovanni Lo Porto and an American named Warren Weinstein had accidentally been killed in a secret counter-terrorism mission.
Lo Porto (37) and Weinstein (73) were being held hostage by al-Qaeda at the time of their deaths and Lo Porto’s family had been led to believe a month before the strike that he was close to being released.
The payment was first reported by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. Daniele Lo Porto, Giovanni's brother, confirmed the accuracy of the story to the Guardian. Neither the US embassy in Rome nor the Italian government would immediately comment.
The agreement between the US government and the Lo Porto family was signed on July 8th, according to documents obtained by La Repubblica that were shared with the Guardian. The payment – €1,185,000 in total – was considered a "donation in the memory of Giovanni Lo Porto".
The agreement was signed by a diplomat named Garrett Stephen Wayne, in his role as financial management centre director of the US embassy in Rome. The agreement clarified that Lo Porto was killed in Pakistan. The White House acknowledged at the time of the announcement that he was killed in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The payment was made to Lo Porto's mother, Giusy, who lives in Palermo, and his father, Vito.
Admission
The agreement includes this stipulation: "This does not imply the consent by the United States of America to the exercise of the jurisdiction of the Italian courts in disputes, if any, directly or indirectly connected with this instrument. Nothing in this instrument implies a waiver to sovereign or personal immunity."
The White House acknowledged the US killed Lo Porto and Weinstein last April, four months after the drone strike in January against an al-Qaeda compound in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. The admission was made only days after the Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, visited the White House.
The US government announced in July that drone and other air strikes have killed between 64 and 116 civilians during Obama’s administration, a tally that was criticised as too low by some experts.
Between 2009 and December 31st, 2015, the administration claimed that it launched 473 strikes, mostly with drones, that killed between 2,372 and 2,581 terrorist “combatants”.
A report in the Washington Post last year said the CIA was investigating a "surveillance lapse" as part of an internal investigation into the killing of Weinstein . Citing US officials, the report said footage examined before the lethal drone strike showed a possible hostage in the area.
In an interview with the Guardian earlier this year, Daniele Lo Porto said his family felt abandoned by Italian and US officials, who never got in touch again after the initial round of public condolences.
Guardian service