US to pay $1.2m to drone victim’s family

Aid worker Giovanni Lo Porto was killed while being held hostage in Pakistan

The US government has agreed to pay $1.2 million to the family of an Italian aid worker killed by a drone strike in Pakistan, reports say.

Aid worker Giovanni Lo Porto, 37, was killed while being held hostage by al Qaeda in 2015. US aid worker Warren Weinstein, 73, being held with him also died in the operation.

The White House has confirmed that payments were made to both families, without releasing details. President Barack Obama admitted the deaths in April last year, saying that he profoundly regretted them. It was announced that compensation would be paid to the families.



Officials said at the time that the operation had targeted an al Qaeda compound in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that they had believed there were no civilians present.

But according to La Repubblica and the Guardian, the agreement states that Lo Porto was killed inside Pakistan. The payment was considered a “donation in memory” of the Italian, La Repubblica says.

Lo Porto had disappeared from Multan in January 2012 but little is known about what happened then. He had worked for an international aid group called Welthungerhilfe.

The US drone program in Pakistan killed over 200 children, how is it any different from the APS massacre?

Weinstein, a development worker, was kidnapped from his home in Lahore in 2011. He had lived in Pakistan for seven years, working on economic development projects. The strike also killed American Ahmed Farouq, described as an al Qaeda leader.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 17^th, 2016.