extrajudicial killing

The New York Times reports: The White House on Wednesday directed the Justice Department to release to the two Congressional Intelligence Committees classified documents discussing the legal justification for killing, by drone strikes and other means, American citizens abroad who are considered terrorists. The White House announcement appears to refer to a long, detailed 2010 [...]

Lawyers have much more interest in constructing lines of reasoning than they do in clear communication. For that reason, the Justice Department’s white paper on the targeted killing of Americans was written not so much to articulate the policies of the U.S. government but rather as part of a legal process designed to ensure that [...]

Press release from the office of Senator Ron Wyden: With the confirmation process for Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan to be Director of the Central Intelligence Agency set to be begin shortly, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, is asking Brennan to provide Congress with the [...]

The Associated Press reports: Israel is considering resuming its contentious practice of assassinating militant leaders in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip in an effort to halt intensified rocket attacks on Israel’s south, according to defense officials. That Israel might renew a practice that brought it harsh international censure is evidence of the tight spot Prime Minister [...]

Rosa Brooks writes: In 1999, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, both colonels in China’s People’s Liberation Army, published a slender book called Unrestricted Warfare. The two officers predicted that technological innovations and globalization would change warfare almost beyond recognition. In a world of cyberattacks, asymmetric warfare, and transnational terrorism, they wrote, “the three indispensable ‘hardware’ [...]

Human Rights Watch: In a statement at the Woodrow Wilson Center on April 30, 2012, chief US counterterrorism advisor John Brennan sought to clarify and justify the US use of aerial drones in targeted killings in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere. He acknowledged that all targeted killings are governed by the requirements of international and domestic [...]

Glenn Greenwald writes: In a speech at Northwestern University yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder provided the most detailed explanation yet for why the Obama administration believes it has the authority to secretly target U.S. citizens for execution by the CIA without even charging them with a crime, notifying them of the accusations, or affording them [...]

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports: The CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or were attending funerals, an investigation by the Bureau for the Sunday Times has revealed. The findings are published just days after President Obama claimed that the drone campaign in Pakistan [...]

Mary Ellen O’Connell writes: By June 2004, it was confirmed that the US was using torture at secret detention sites and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. It was in that month that piles of “torture memos” were released to the public. Torture did not officially end until President Obama took office in January 2009. A similar [...]