Legal Experts Slam 'Targeted Killings' of US Citizens

IPS - William Fisher
Civil liberties advocates and legal authorities struck back Friday at what they describe as the "deliberate targeted killing of U.S. citizens far away from any active hostilities, as long as the executive branch determines unilaterally that they meet a secret definition of who the enemy is."

In an admission that took the intelligence community and its critics by surprise, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair acknowledged in a congressional hearing Wednesday that the U.S. may, with executive approval, deliberately target and kill U.S. citizens who are suspected of being involved in terrorism.

The American Civil Liberties Union is among those expressing serious concern about the lack of public information about the policy and the potential for abuse of unchecked executive power.

Attorney George Brent Mickum... told IPS, "I guess my sense is that it's just more fear mongering. They kill somebody and don't need to offer any justification."

"We have killed thousands of innocent civilians while attempting to target alleged operatives. And let us not forget how frequently our intelligence has been wrong about alleged operatives," Mickum noted.

He added, "My clients Bisher al Rawi, Jamil el-Banna, Martin Mubanga, abu Zubaydah, and Shaker Aamer all are alleged to have been operatives based on intel. In every case that intel was incorrect. I don't have any expectation that our intel with respect to alleged American operatives is likely to be any better."

Another constitutional scholar, Professor Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois Law School, told IPS that "this extrajudicial execution of human beings" violates both international human rights law and the fifth amendment of the U.S. constitution.

"The U.S. government has now established a 'death list' for U.S. citizens abroad akin to those established by Latin American dictatorships during their so-called dirty wars," he said..... Full story