Holder: Constitution doesn't cover terrorists

Friends,

 

A speaking tour on the illegal use of drones is coming to Baltimore on May 5.  Let me know if you know of a site in Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger’s district where we could hold the forum.  Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin will be a speaker, and two women from Pakistan will also attend the event.  Benjamin’s book on drones will be published on April 11.  Ideally, the site would be in Baltimore County around Towson.  Let me know if you have some suggestions.

 

Kagiso,

 

Max

 

USA TODAY

 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2012-03-05/eric-holder-killing-us-citizens-terrorist-threat/53374776/1

 

Holder: Constitution doesn't cover terrorists

By Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY

 

In his most forceful defense yet of the Obama administration's use of lethal force against U.S. citizens linked to terrorism, Attorney General Eric Holder said Monday that the Constitution does not protect U.S. suspects plotting to kill other Americans.

By Brian Kersey, AP

Attorney General Eric Holder speaks at the Northwestern University law school on March 5.

Holder said in a speech at the Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago that the government is within its rights to kill citizens who are senior leaders in al-Qaeda or affiliate groups who pose an "imminent threat" of attack against the USA and whose capture is "not feasible."

 

"Given the nature of how terrorists act and where they tend to hide, it may not always be feasible to capture a U.S. citizen terrorist who presents an imminent threat of violent attack," Holder said, according to a text of his speech. "In that case, our government has the clear authority to defend the United States with lethal force."

 

The attorney general's remarks come as civil rights advocates have condemned such killings, including the fatal military drone strike in September against Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born leader of al-Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen. U.S. government officials have asserted that al-Awlaki helped direct the failed Christmas Day bombing of a commercial airliner over Detroit in 2009 and the failed effort to blow up U.S. cargo planes with explosives planted in printer cartridges in 2010.

 

Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union sued to obtain Justice Department memos authorizing the action and detailing how the government places Americans on "kill lists."

 

Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU's National Security Project, said that although Holder's speech represented "a gesture towards additional transparency, it is ultimately a defense of the government's chillingly broad claimed authority to conduct targeted killings of civilians, including American citizens."

 

"Few things are as dangerous to American liberty as the proposition that the government should be able to kill citizens anywhere in the world on the basis of legal standards and evidence that are never submitted to a court, either before or after the fact," Shamsi said.

 

University of Notre Dame law professor Mary Ellen O'Connell, who also has called for the release of government documents authorizing the lethal force, said: "Relevant international law does not permit targeted killing far from battle zones."

 

Holder said opponents of the government's position cling to legal interpretations that are "simply not accurate."

 

"The Constitution's guarantee of due process is ironclad, and it is essential, but … it does not require judicial approval before the president may use force abroad against a senior operational leader of a foreign terrorist organization with which the United States is at war, even if that individual happens to be a U.S. citizen," he said.

 

© 2012 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

 

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