© Reuters/Denis BalibouseFormer HSBC employee Herve Falciani poses for photographs before a news conference in Divonne-les-Bains, France October 28, 2015.
HSBC said it welcomed the ruling on Falciani, a 43-year old French citizen who had been on trial in Switzerland.
HSBC's Swiss unit has been in the spotlight since 2008, when Falciani, a former IT employee there, fled Geneva with files that were leaked to the media and were alleged to show evidence of tax evasion by clients. French newspaper Le Monde has said it identified more than 106,000 clients.
Falciani, who is based in France, did not attend his trial and stayed out of Switzerland while it was going on.
He may not serve any time in a Swiss prison since France typically does not extradite its own citizens, and there are no legal proceedings against him in France.
Falciani's lawyer -- Marc Henzelin -- did not immediately respond to a request for a comment.
......“We are former Air Force service members,” the letter begins. We joined the Air Force to protect American lives and to protect our Constitution. We came to the realization that the innocent civilians we were killing only fueled the feelings of hatred that ignited terrorism and groups like ISIS, while also serving as a fundamental recruiting tool similar to Guantanamo Bay. This administration and its predecessors have built a drone program that is one of the most devastating driving forces for terrorism and destabilization around the world.”
Elsewhere the former drone operators have described how their colleagues dismissed children as “fun-sized terrorists” and compared killing them to “cutting the grass before it grows too long.” Children who live in countries targeted by the drone program are in a state of constant terror, according to Westmoreland: “There are 15-year-olds growing up who have not lived a day without drones overhead, but you also have expats who are watching what’s going on in their home countries and seeing regularly the violations that are happening there, and that is something that could radicalize them.”
By reliable estimates, ninety percent of those killed in drone strikes are entirely harmless people,........[Link]