The US military has finally acknowledged that it mistakenly killed a civilian man in an airstrike in Syria nearly a year ago after misidentifying him as a senior al Qaeda leader, according to the findings of an investigation ordered by US Central Command last summer.
The investigation was completed in November, but CENTCOM did not publicly disclose its findings until Thursday.
The probe “concluded the strike was conducted in compliance with the law of armed conflict as well as Department of Defense and CENTCOM policies” but “revealed several issues that could be improved,” according to a summary of the findings obtained by CNN.
The summary declined to detail the “issues,” saying that many of the facts of the investigation remain classified. “We are committed to learning from this incident and improving our targeting processes to mitigate potential civilian harm,” the summary says.
Questions about who was actually killed in the May 3, 2023, airstrike were raised almost immediately, with the man’s family insisting he was not an al Qaeda leader but a farmer and father of 10 named Loutfi Hassan Mesto. Still, the US did not launch an official investigation of the strike until nearly 8 weeks later after the strike that killed him.
Asked about the nearly six month delay to making the conclusions public, a defense official pointed to the need to coordinate with multiple organizations, including the Syrian White Helmets, a non-governmental emergency response organization.
“Multiple extensions were requested in order to ensure this investigation was thorough, accurate, and included all relevant information,” the official said.
The investigation was ultimately ordered by General Erik Kurilla, the senior general in charge of US forces in the Middle East. Kurilla ordered that his command announce on Twitter that a senior al Qaeda leader had been targeted in the May 2023 drone strike, despite not yet having confirmation of who was actually killed in the strike, CNN previously reported.
Mesto’s family was not offered a compensation payment, known as an ex gratia payment, following his killing, the defense official told CNN.
A compensation payment was considered, but “determined not appropriate,” the official said. “The family will not be receiving monetary compensation given the facts of this situation and both policy and practical limitations.”
It is unclear what about the deadly drone strike led the military to conclude an ex gratia payment was not appropriate in this case.
The incident raised questions about how thoroughly CENTCOM had implemented the military’s civilian harm mitigation policy, a process for preventing and responding to civilian casualties as a result of US military operations.
The policy was developed in 2022 after a botched US drone strike in Kabul that killed 10 civilians in the final days of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. In that case, CENTCOM opened a formal 15-6 investigation into the strike within a week of the operation. Family members of the victims were offered ex gratia payments.
The investigation of Mesto’s death, which concluded on November 15, 2023, was carried out by senior service members and civilian employees “not directly involved with the strike, with extensive subject matter expertise in intelligence, law of armed conflict, operations, and targeting matters,” the CENTCOM summary says. The team, led by Brigadier General John P. Cogbill, interviewed more than 40 witnesses, visited sites in Iraq, Jordan and the US, and solicited information from non-governmental organizations.
Mesto’s family previously told CNN that he had been out grazing his sheep when he was killed. Loutfi never left his village during the Syrian uprisings and did not support any political faction, his brother said.
