U.S. government officials appear to be climbing down from claims that a man slain in a Hellfire missile strike in Syria on May 3rd was a “senior Al Qaeda leader.” Similar to the drone strike that killed an aid worker’s family after Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal, the truth appears to be that the deceased was just a poor farmer in a field.
In early May 2023, Pentagon officials boasted about the kill, carried out by a Predator drone, but even the Washington Post now reports they are walking back their claims, with evidence mounting that the man they killed was an ordinary civilian.
“We are no longer confident we killed a senior AQ official,” one defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, admitted to the newspaper.
Another, also anonymous official conceded “the strike did not kill the original target” as well, yet insisted they still “believe the person to be al-Qaeda.”
But Charles Lister, the Middle East Institute’s director for Syria and Countering Terrorism and Extremism, told WaPo the the White Helmets organization attended the scene “[v]ery quickly after this strike” and “identified the individual with his name and his profession.”
“Locals came forward to say, this guy’s always been a farmer. He’s never had any political activities; he’s never had any affiliation with armed groups,” Lister said, noting that the “pace and breadth of such push-back was actually quite unusual.”
WaPo identified the victim as 56-year-old Lotfi Hassan Misto, and interviewed eight people including his brother and son, who insist he was an ordinary man whose “whole life was spent poor.”
“If they claim that he’s a terrorist, or that they got someone from al-Qaeda, they’re all liars,” Misto’s brother said.
Echoes of Afghanistan.
The case echoes that of Zemari Ahmadi, a worker for a U.S. aid group in Afghanistan.
Zemari was killed along with up to nine others, including seven children, as the Biden regime scrambled to regain credibility following an Islamic State – Khorasan Province (ISIS-K) attack during the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which killed a number of American servicemen.
The government initially claimed the strike that killed Ahmadi eliminated “high profile” ISIS-K militants.
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