Ramstein Air Base is a United States Air Force base is southwestern Germany. It is also headquarter of NATO Allied Air Command. Former US colonel and diplomat Ann Wright took an active part in this year’s protest week Stop Air Base Ramstein. In a recent interview, she said:

The issue of what goes on in Ramstein, being a coordinating center for the assassination of peoples in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Niger, Yemen,… all coming through Germany, should make the German Government think.

One present estimate is that 7,715-11,067 people, of which 252-345 children, have been killed in US drone strikes and other covert actions in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia. But the German government pretends to not know what is going on, even when a German citizen is killed in a drone attack in Pakistan.

“It is simply murder,” says Björn Schiffbauer, of the Institute for International Law at the University of Cologne. He argues that Air Force personnel used in the drone attacks could be prosecuted as war criminals by German prosecutors in the city of Zweibrücken, who have authority for the region.

But that has not happened, according to an article in Spiegel.

Also other European countries are involved. A proposed site in Italy would “act as a back-up system to the Ramstein site to avoid single point of failure.” Swedish and Norwegian satelite stations are believed to assist.

For more information about the protests and to sign a petition (in German), see Stopp Air Base Ramstein.