Fifteen months after hearing our appeal, an Information Tribunal handed down its decision this week rejecting our arguments that basic details about the deployment of armed Reaper drones outside of Operation Shader (Iraq/Syria) by the UK needed to be released to enable public and parliamentary oversight over such deployments.
Both Clive Lewis MP and Baroness Vivienne Stern, Vice-Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Drones and Modern Conflict had submitted statements to the Tribunal supporting our appeal. Clive Lewis argued that the refusal to answer these questions about the deployment of Reaper is “a serious backward step in terms of transparency and accountability.” Baroness Stern stated:
“Despite repeated attempts by myself and colleagues to attain even the most basic information about the UK’s drone deployments, policy, and commitments, Parliament has not been provided with the accurate and timely information needed to meaningfully carry out its constitutional scrutiny role. Whilst certain details must be kept secret in order to ensure operational and national security, the current trend of withholding information about the use of drones purely because it is seen as an “intelligence” asset, as well as withholding vital information on the UK’s growing military capabilities and commitments is deeply concerning and unjustified.”
While insisting that it was neither confirming nor denying the deployment, the MoD argued against the release of the information on three broad grounds . As the Decision Notice states:
“the MOD’s key concern about the release of the requested information was that it could lead an adversary to infer the absence or presence of UK personnel. In his [The MoD’s witness’] opinion were the locations to be released or inferred from a combination of requested data and already published material (the “mosaic effect”), there would be an elevated risk to any potential personnel in that location and an increased risk of hostile acts against them.”
A second concern was
“there would be an increased risk to any nation hosting the Reaper operations as an adversary may target a hostile act at the host nation rather than the UK which may be a more difficult target. Thereby undermining the UK’s relationship with that nation and undermining military operations conducted from that location.”
Finally, and most concerning from a scrutiny and oversight point of view the MoD argued (again quoting Decision Notice)
“The effectiveness of operations conducted using Reaper outside Operation Shader in future depend, in part, on a greater degree of ambiguity as to the employment of Reaper in order to be successful. It is important to retain a degree of ambiguity regarding the full extent of Reaper operations now in order to maintain this flexibility in the future. “
Drone Wars argued strongly that the information requested – a single figure of the number of sorties undertaken outside of Operation Shader and their broad, geographic location (i.e. ‘The Middle East’) – was not capable of causing the prejudice alleged. We also pointed out to the Tribunal that the MoD has previously released the number of sorties undertaken outside of Operation Shader (In response to our questions about the targeted killing of Naweed Hussain in 2018) without any of the prejudice or harm suggested, but that seems to have been ignored by the tribunal. Read more
