A Muslim cleric tied to the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner has become the first U.S. citizen added to a list of suspected terrorists the CIA is authorized to kill, a U.S. official said Tuesday.
Anwar al-Aulaqi, who resides in Yemen, was previously placed on a target list maintained by the U.S. military's Joint Special Operations Command and has survived at least one strike carried out by Yemeni forces with U.S. assistance against a gathering of suspected al-Qaeda operatives.
Because he is a U.S. citizen, adding Aulaqi to the CIA list required special approval from the White House, officials said. The move means that Aulaqi would be considered a legitimate target not only for a military strike carried out by U.S. and Yemeni forces, but also for lethal CIA operations.
"He's in everybody's sights," said the U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the topic's sensitivity.
CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said: "This agency conducts its counterterrorism operations in strict accord with the law."
The decision to add Aulaqi to the CIA target list reflects the view among agency analysts that a man previously regarded mainly as a militant preacher has taken on an expanded role in al-Qaeda's Yemen-based offshoot.
"He's recently become an operational figure for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula," said a second U.S. official. "He's working actively to kill Americans, so it's both lawful and sensible to try to stop him." The official stressed that there are "careful procedures our government follows in these kinds of cases, but U.S. citizenship hardly gives you blanket protection overseas to plot the murder of your fellow citizens."
Aulaqi corresponded by e-mail with Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 12 soldiers and one civilian at Fort Hood, Tex., last year. Aulaqi is not believed to have helped plan the attack, although he praised Hasan in an online posting for carrying it out.
Concern grew about the cleric's role after he was linked to the Nigerian accused of attempting to bomb a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day by detonating an explosive device he had smuggled in his underwear. Aulaqi acknowledged teaching and corresponding with the Nigerian but denied ordering the attack.
The CIA is known to have carried out at least one Predator strike in Yemen. A U.S. citizen, Kamal Derwish, was among six alleged al-Qaeda operatives killed in that 2002 operation but was not the target.
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A Question About Targeted Killing
Posted: 07 Apr 2010 04:25 PM PDT
by Kevin Jon Heller
As the Washington Post notes, the Obama administration has authorized the CIA to assassinate Aulaqi wherever he is found. It is very unlikely that CIA agents qualify as lawful combatants — they don’t distinguish themselves from the civilian population, they don’t carry their arms openly, etc. So, let’s assume that CIA agents manage to kill Aulaqi in Afghanistan. I assume everyone would be okay with Afghanistan capturing and prosecuting those agents for murder? They would have no combatant’s privilege, and “self-defense” would only (at best) prohibit Afghanistan from claiming that the US committed an internationally wrongful act.
Thoughts?
NOTE: I should make clear that I am interested in situations in which the US is relying on IHL, not “self-defense,” to justify targeted killing — situations in which the US argues that the individual in question was directly participating in hostilities and was thus a lawful target for lethal military force. My point is simply that, even if we assume the existence of an armed conflict and that the target was directly participating in hostilities and was thus not a civilian at the moment he was killed, a CIA agent could be prosecuted for murder under domestic criminal law even though a US soldier could not, because only the latter would have had a combatant’s privilege to kill. I take it as fairly obvious that if IHL does not apply — and the US’s argument that we are in an amorphous global armed conflict with Al Qaeda is no less incorrect when made by Obama than it was when made by Bush — anyone who used lethal force against a “terrorist,” CIA or US military, could be prosecuted for murder in a domestic court with jurisdiction over the crime. As Marko has pointed out, the US’s alternative claim of “self-defense” might prevent the state whose territory was the object of the attack from claiming that the US violated its sovereignty. But it would not provide the killer (-CIA, non combatant - DOng-gle ) with a defense to a criminal charge.
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Why the President’s Targeted Killings are Illegal (According to Professor O’Connell) Posted: 09 Apr 2010 11:43 AM PDT by Julian Ku Kevin has done, and is doing, a very nice job of critiquing the legality of the Obama Administration’s targeted killing policy. On the critical side, it is also worth noting the views of Mary Ellen O’Connell, Professor at Notre Dame, who has become a leading public critic of the legality of this policy. Her basic point is that international law only permits such killings on the battlefield, and any killings off of the battlefield (as she defines it) are illegal acts of extrajudicial murder. This would be true whether or not the U.S. actor is a privileged combatant. I think this makes sense, even if I doubt it is right. It does show, however, that the Obama and Bush Administration’s policies as to the nature of this war is pretty close (and getting closer). Because it is President Obama, and because he has folks like Harold Koh, Neal Katyal, and Marty Lederman to defend these views, I don’t think there will be nearly the same level of controversy as during the Bush years. ===========================
