CCR Condemns Targeted Assassination of U.S. Citizen Anwar Al-Awlaki

[EFerrari]

CCR Cites a Lack of Adherence to Constitutional and International Laws that Afford Due Process
[e-mail]

September 30, 2011, New York—Today, in response to the news that a missile attack by an American drone aircraft had killed U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Awlaki in Yemen, the Center for Constitutional Rights, which had previously brought a challenge in federal court to the legality of the authorization to target Al-Awlaki in Yemen, released the following statement:

“The assassination of Anwar Al-Awlaki by American drone attacks is the latest of many affronts to domestic and international law,” said Vince Warren, Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “The targeted assassination program that started under President Bush and expanded under the Obama Administration essentially grants the executive the power to kill any U.S. citizen deemed a threat, without any judicial oversight, or any of the rights afforded by our Constitution. If we allow such gross overreaches of power to continue, we are setting the stage for increasing erosions of civil liberties and the rule of law.”

Pardiss Kebriaei, a CCR senior staff attorney, added: “In dismissing our complaint, the district court noted that there were nonetheless "disturbing questions" raised by the authority being asserted by the United States. There certainly are disturbing questions that need to be asked again, and answered by the U.S. government about the circumstances of the killing and the legal standard that governed it.”

Further information on CCR’s challenge to targeted killings is online at http://ccrjustice.org/targetedkillings


http://ccrjustice.org/newsroom/press-releases/ccr-condemns-targeted-assassination-of-u.s.-citizen-anwar-al-awlaki

[socialshockwave]

1. Better to take one guilty, wicked life then let him go free,

and as a result, a thousand innocents die.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Al-Awalki was dangerous and needed to be brought to justice.

[a la izquierda]

2. Brought to justice, not killed.

[socialshockwave]

3. I would have prefered he be captured alive, but

Yemeni security forces had no luck finding him.

And I'm sure there were sections of the Yemeni government that sympathized with Al Quaeda.

It's just like with Bin Laden.

[EFerrari]

6. Execution without due process is expressly forbidden by the 5th Amendment.

[court jester]

4. Net recommendation: 0 votes (Your vote: +1)

Mobs are dangerous. Time to get out while it's possible. Bonne Chance!

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looking up, of course people are the same but there's less of them there...

[Solly Mack]

5. and I support CCR

[gratuitous]

7. Didn't you know?

Your rights are based on someone's estimation of your level of cooperation with the forces trying to kill you. If you don't go quietly, it's perfectly within the bounds of legality to blow you and those around you to Kingdom Come without warning. We call that "justice" nowadays in the United States.

A word of advice, though: Don't watch too closely as the pwogs pivot from outrage over Troy Davis to glee over Anwar Al-Awlaki. You'll get whiplash if you aren't properly trained for it.

[EFerrari]

8. Stronger statement by Micheal Ratner

Is this the world we want? Where the president of the United States can place an American citizen, or anyone else for that matter, living outside a war zone on a targeted assassination list, and then have him murdered by drone strike.

This was the very result we at the Center for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU feared when we brought a case in US federal court on behalf of Anwar al-Awlaki's father, hoping to prevent this targeted killing. We lost the case on procedural grounds, but the judge considered the implications of the practice as raising "serious questions", asking:

"Can the executive order the assassination of a US citizen without first affording him any form of judicial process whatsoever, based on the mere assertion that he is a dangerous member of a terrorist organisation?"

Yes, Anwar al-Awlaki was a radical Muslim cleric. Yes, his language and speeches were incendiary. He may even have engaged in plots against the United States – but we do not know that because he was never indicted for a crime.

This profile should not have made him a target for a killing without due process and without any effort to capture, arrest and try him. The US government knew his location for purposes of a drone strike, so why was no effort made to arrest him in Yemen, a country that apparently was allied in the US efforts to track him down?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/sep/30/anwar-awlaki-extrajudicial-murder