Toyota To Sue US For Destroying Car Carrying ISIS Leader

“We would have made the same decision if Baleedi were riding in a Volkswagen,” said General Moe Terrs, a Pentagon spokesman.

Sanaa, Yemen, February 4 – The world’s largest auto manufacturer announced its intention today to take the United States to court over the latter’s destruction by drone-fired missile of a Toyota vehicle carrying the leader of the Islamic State in Yemen.

Jalal Baleedi and two of his aides were killed in an American drone strike yesterday on the car ferrying them between strongholds, and Toyota executives said they will demand restitution from the US government for choosing to attack their target while he was in the Toyota. By targeting the vehicle, said the company, American military commanders specifically made a link between Toyota and the Islamic State, an association that is liable to hurt the automaker’s reputation and sales.

Vice President for Public Affairs Ishimoto Sakadima told reporters Thursday that Toyota will soon file the paperwork necessary to initiate a lawsuit against the US. “If American intelligence could pinpoint when Mr. Baleedi would be in the car, they could have taken him out immediately before or immediately after,” he asserted. “In our view, there are major suspicions that somewhere in the American chain of command there is a desire to taint our company.”

US military and political officials declined to comment. “I am only at liberty to say that we would have made the same decision if Baleedi were riding in a Volkswagen,” said General Moe Terrs, a Pentagon spokesman.

Toyota has been struggling to protect its reputation over the past year in the wake of video and still photography showing the company’s vehicles in the service of the Islamic State, primarily in Iraq and Syria. Toyota insists that such vehicles, mostly Hilux pickup trucks, were acquired in Iraq and Syria by the terrorist organization without the manufacturer’s knowledge. Nevertheless, the sight of Islamic State fighters driving convoys of Toyota cars and trucks have confronted the company with an image crisis, and has rendered its executives sensitive to possible further erosion of its reputation.

Sales of Toyota vehicles have not suffered appreciably as a result of the revelations, but the company appears to be taking no chances. “The only reason Volkswagen didn’t knock Toyota out of the number one spot was the revelation of their massive emissions-compliance fraud,” explained automotive industry consultant Edsel Ford. “Otherwise, it would have been a real blow to Toyota. I think we can expect them to be pretty aggressive about protecting their reputation going forward.” Ford refused to weigh in on the specific merits or chances that this lawsuit will proceed. “I’m just amazed that a Japanese company is going down that road, considering the atrocities that Japan committed in World War II and still refuses to acknowledge,” she said.