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Rights Groups File Challenge to Targeted Killing by US
NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) today filed a lawsuit challenging the government's asserted authority to carry out "targeted killings" of U.S. citizens located far from any armed conflict zone.
According to today's legal complaint, the government has not disclosed the standards it uses for authorizing the premeditated and deliberate killing of U.S. citizens located far from any battlefield. The groups argue that the American people are entitled to know the standards being used for these life and death decisions. The authority contemplated by the Obama administration is far broader
than what the Constitution and international law allow, the groups
charge. Outside of armed conflict, both the Constitution and
international law prohibit targeted killing except as a last resort to
protect against concrete, specific and imminent threats of death or
serious physical injury. An extrajudicial killing policy under which
names are added to CIA and military "kill lists" through a secret
executive process and stay there for months at a time is plainly not
limited to imminent threats.
"The United States cannot simply execute people, including its own citizens, anywhere in the world based on its own say-so," said Vince Warren, Executive Director of CCR. "The law prohibits the government from killing without trial or conviction other than in the face of an imminent threat that leaves no time for deliberation or due process. That the government adds people to kill lists after a bureaucratic process and leaves them on the lists for months at a time flies in the face of the Constitution and international law."
The groups charge that targeting individuals for execution who are suspected of terrorism but have not been convicted or even charged - without oversight, judicial process or disclosed standards for placement on kill lists - also poses the risk that the government will erroneously target the wrong people. In recent years, the U.S. government has detained many men as terrorists, only for courts or the government itself to discover later that the evidence was wrong or unreliable.
According to today's legal complaint, the government has not disclosed the standards it uses for authorizing the premeditated and deliberate killing of U.S. citizens located far from any battlefield. The groups argue that the American people are entitled to know the standards being used for these life and death decisions.
"A program that authorizes killing U.S. citizens, without judicial oversight, due process or disclosed standards is unconstitutional, unlawful and un-American," said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. "We don't sentence people to prison on the basis of secret criteria, and we certainly shouldn't sentence them to death that way. It is not enough for the executive branch to say ‘trust us' - we have seen that backfire in the past and we should learn from those mistakes."
CCR and the ACLU were retained by Nasser Al-Aulaqi to bring a lawsuit in connection with the government's decision to authorize the targeted killing of his son, U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi, whom the CIA and Defense Department have targeted for death. The complaint asks a court to rule that using lethal force far from any battlefield and without judicial process is illegal in all but the narrowest circumstances and to prohibit the government from carrying out targeted killings except in compliance with these standards. It also asks the court to order the government to disclose the standards it uses to place U.S. citizens on government kill lists.
Today's lawsuit was filed against the CIA, Defense Department and the president in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Attorneys on the case are Jameel Jaffer, Ben Wizner and Jonathan Manes of the ACLU; Pardiss Kebriaei, Maria LaHood and Bill Quigley of CCR; and Arthur B. Spitzer of the ACLU of the Nation's Capital. Co-counsel in Yemen is Mohammed Allawo of the Allawo Law Firm and the National Organization for Defending Human Rights (HOOD).
For more information on the case, including fact sheets and legal papers, visit: www.aclu.org/targetedkillings and www.ccrjustice.org/
Read Glenn Greenwald's take on these developments here.
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30 Comments so far
Show AllChange We Can Believe In.
"We" can't blame George W. Bush, Richard Bruce Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales or Donald Henry Rumsfeld anymore. Did "We" get hoodwinked or what! Just remember to vote Democratic in November or "We" will really be in trouble. The blue cyanide capsule is flavored. The red cyanide capsule is not.
The choice is yours. Choose wisely and please send $25 or whatever you can to the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party needs your support now more than ever. Our American way of life hangs in the balance. Think of your children and grandchildren as you write that check.
I like your sarcasm. And you couldn't be more on the nose.
The Obama-worshippers, however, will continue to vote for their Golden Child regardless of anything he does or doesn't do, like claiming he has the inherent right to order the executions of American citizens anywhere on the earth without due process.
Of course, if Bush had made that same claim - which even HE didn't have the brass cahones to try - these same Obama-bots would be foaming at the mouth and screaming for his impeachment for such a dictatorial trampling of due process.
But hey, when their Golden Boy does it, "that's different."
Hypocritical douchebags, as most Democrat voters are.
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross."
Sinclair Lewis, "It Cant Happen Here", 1935
OK OK OK I see that I am on some future executive ideological threat list.
I have been tryin to block all that out so that I can go insane naturally.
And when the courts rule either, that what the administration is doing is unlawful, what sanctions will the courts impose on the President, the CIA and the US Military for their illegal actions. Will they just order a slap on the wrist or will heads roll? Or, if the courts rule that the President does indeed have the power on just his say so to have American citizens overseas assassinated without due process, WHAT WILL WE AS A PEOPLE DO to the courts, the President, CIA and the Generals? It is getting close to the point where push comes to shove folks!
First, The Courts, all the way up to the Supreme Court, will rule that The President was given emergency powers by the congresses to deal with the attacks of 9/11 and that those powers have never been rescinded. (In essence, Marshall Law was established.)
The major problem is that there was never an investigation of the murders of almost 3,000 people. An official version of the attacks was given on the morning of 9/11/2001 and that was that....If an Independent (Not FBI or CIA,or any Federal Agency) Agency with investigators screened with lie detector tests and from a non aligned country was given the task of investigating, the first person they would have interrogated would have neen Dick Cheney and then every NORAD General that followed his orders to have 5 NORAD practice exercises on 9/11/2001.....Without those practices none of the attacks could have happened....The practices rendered the Northeast United States defenseless and 4 hijacked planes could not be intercepted!
"The Power Elite" have had control of The Supreme Court since the election of 2000.
If you think things have changed, things have gotten worse!
Good luck, as you notice the mainstream media is right there giving both sides of the case! NOT!
BINGO,In particular to the first very pertinent paragraph directly above....
On WBAI-Radio Thursday morning last week, historian-writer Peter Dale Scott pointedly mentioned that earlier this year President Obama renewed that Emergency Powers Presidential ruling Bush put in place after 9/11.
I was booted (physical body press) out of a Democratic party event just a couple weeks ago because I had on a differnt button than everyone else.
http://www.postonpolitics.com/2010/08/arth-supporter-booted-from-sink-smith-event/
May seem insignificant until you realize that this was a coordinated action of the police, the campaign and the big kids in the party elite.
I will no longer subject myself to voting for the lesser of two evils. I am voting outside the corporate crony capitalist duopoly and if there is no one then the line is left blank.
I'll be casting my sacred vote for that great Amerikkkan Alfred E. Neuman. You member him--that brilliant and insightful young man of Mad Magazine fame whose famous quote is, "What me worry?"
THEN SOME ONE WILL FILL IT IN FOR YOU..
Vince Warren, Executive Director of CCR: "...That the government adds people to kill lists after a bureaucratic process and leaves them on the lists for months at a time flies in the face of the Constitution and international law."
Since W Bush, Barry and the rest of the plutocratic oligarchy stole the Amerikkkan government, the Constitution has been rendered null and void. Amerikkka has entered the realm of a Stalinist regime by ordering the torture and murder of its own citizens. Amerikkka has passed the point of no return toward totalitarianism.
I take it nobody in the US cares if America targets anyone else for murder. Killing non-Americans is just fine. And killing Americans is fine too, so long as the people doing it are members of the NRA and private citizens, not representatives of the government (unless they are state appointed executioners). Weird country.
Will probably get kicked for lack of "standing" to raise these charges.
Only the targeted citizens can bring these charges (and they won't know they are targeted until their citizenship is removed with extreme prejudice).
Not quite game over, but I understand what you're saying. The time for peaceful resistance is almost at an end.
killing except as a last resort to protect against concrete, specific and imminent threats of death or serious physical injury.
list, I have a list
Waste the people who run our government and a worst bunch would take their place with a more brutal police state forced upon us. Remember JFK.
Whereas, kill their fake morality, destroy their "be all you can be" mentality, and come to a screeching halt would this rich man's dictatorship American has suffered since 1776.
you have three months : . (
But surely you realize that paid actor Obama was told when he was hired for the job, that he would be toast, the toasted house negro who gets blamed for all the dollars given to High Society to appease their greed, blamed for all the war funding given to our military vampires to appease their lust for power, body parts and blood.
DEAD AMERICAN SOLDER -- WITH BLOODY HEAD
LATEST NEWS -- SEVEN AMERICANS BLOODY AND DEAD
What Americans need to see is the bloody effect their wars of blunder are having on our young solders, a great many teenagers age 18 to 19. But to do that they first need to loose all faith in Western media, then click on some anti-Western media such as the WEB page below.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/140619.html
This is alarming executive overreach. Murder of people not proven guilty ,on government authority, is a slope too slippery by far.
If the USA targets and kills US Citizens, will the USA then have to bomb, invade and illegally occupy itself until it roots out the killers?
We can't allow any group to get away with killing americans...this was the justification for both the Afganistan and the illegal Iraq invasion.
So that's what those red dots on my shirt are.
Assassination is back. Now let's perfect this ancient art!
Or, in the immortal words of another person of import, "Reload!"
What authority did they have in November, 1963?
I turned 13 years old on November 1, 1963. I vividly remember the Kennedy assassination. I remember reports at the time, during the Warren Commission Whitewash chaired by magic bullet Arlen Specter, that all records regarding the event would be sealed for 50 years and after that would be available to the public. That would be November 2013. We'll see. There is no way that I will ever be convinced that Oswald, if he was one of the shooters at all, acted alone. I believe we lost our country on that fateful date in an internal coup.
When torture was introduced into American public debate as a legal/political issue, it was strongly endorsed by none other than that great American, Alan Dershowitz...the alleged defense attorney. What, you may have asked yourself, would inspire a defense attorney to advocate such contrarian views as the torture of prisoners? Dershowitz, a racist, as are all Zionists, knew, first of all, that such measures would only be taken against Muslims. Additionally, this particular defense attorney is, first and foremost, a Zionist and Israel has been kidnapping and torturing civilians for over sixty years in furtherance of it's vaunted intelligence apparatus. Dershowitz' idea was to drag America down to the level of Israel so as to conjoin America at the hip in the eyes of the world with the global pariah thus making things better all around for Israel. Well it worked beautifully. Hats off to the Zionists. They have made America as detestable as Israel through their successful push for the invasion of Iraq and the inevitable invasion of Iran, the introduction of extra-judicial targeted assassinations (always popular in Israel) and through the advocacy of torture...all for Israel's benefit and no one elses.
A death sentence without benefit of due process is a lynching by definition, thus now we have a "black president" who sanctions lynchings of US citizens abroad on his approval, and we used to have people in the 1930s advocating federal legislation to ban lynching.
As Martin Luther King jr said in that 1967 speech the United States "has been on the wrong side of history since" the Second World War. Dr King was right!
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