Judge Throws Out Challenge to Extrajudicial Killings of Americans
Source: rinf.com
A US federal judge late Friday dismissed a lawsuit challenging the Obama administration’s killing of three Americans in drone strokes, a decision slammed as “a true travesty of justice for our constitutional democracy.”The case was brought by the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of family members of the victims killed in 2011 in Yemen: Anwar Al-Aulaqi, his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman, and Samir Khan.
The Obama administration admitted last year that it had killed the three, though the older Al-Aulaki, described as a senior AQAP leader and “intimately involved in detailed planning and putting in place plots against U.S. persons,” was the only of the three that was “specifically targeted.”
The rights groups had charged that Anwar Al-Aulaqi was put on the government’s “kill list,” and put there “without due process and without any effort to capture, arrest and try him.” Khan was traveling in the same vehicle and was killed the attack that targeted Anwar Al-Aulaki. Abdulrahman Al-Aulaki was killed in a separate drone strike that targeted another individual weeks later.
In her ruling delivered Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer dismissed the challenge to the constitutionality of the killings.
The officials named as defendants in the suit, including then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, “cannot be held personally responsible in monetary damages for conducting war.”
Though siding with the defendants, Collyer writes in her opinion: “The powers granted to the Executive and Congress to wage war and provide for national security does not give them carte blanche to deprive a U.S. citizen of his life without due process and without any judicial review.”
Collyer states that the victims’ Fourth Amendment rights were not violated because they were not “seized,” they were killed, because “[u]nmanned drones are functionally incapable of ‘seizing’ a person; they are designed to kill, not capture.”
The Fifth Amendment violation does not apply to the younger Al-Aulaki or Khan, as they were not deliberately targeted, she writes, explaining that it was “negligence” that they were harmed as bystanders. “Mere negligence does not give rise to a constitutional deprivation,” she states in her opinion.
For Anwar Al-Aulaki’s due process rights’ violations, Collyer writes that “the Court finds no available remedy under U.S. law for this claim.”
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Read the full article at: rinf.com
