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When a U.S. citizen heard he was on his own country’s drone target list, he wasn’t sure he believed it. After five near-misses, he does – and is suing the United States to contest his own execution
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With Reprieve’s help, Kareem did what the system asks a law-abiding American citizen with a grievance to do. He sued, filing a complaint in district court in Washington, D.C., on March 30th, 2017, asking the U.S. government to take him off the Kill List, at least until he had a chance to challenge the evidence against him.The case, still unresolved more than a year later, has awesome implications not just for Kareem but for all Americans – all people everywhere, for that matter.
It’s not a stretch to say that it’s one of the most important lawsuits to ever cross the desk of a federal judge. The core of the Bill of Rights is in play, and a wrong result could formalize a slide into authoritarianism that began long ago, but accelerated after 9/11.
He needs to take the matter to Information Retrieval, but heaven help him if he doesn't get his receipt stamped first.
[Ed note: It's a long read, but provides extensive background on the US government's kill list development, implementation, and complications in trying to do anything about it.]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday July 21 2018, @02:35PM
Okay, let's just for a moment accept your premise that "we're at war" (even though the definition/legality is questionable, and the enemy is undefined) justifies extraordinary measures like killing American citizens without trial. (And even though that's straight out of the Orwell playbook... "We've always been at war with Eastasia....")
The question is -- why is this guy a "target"? You've made the assumption that he deserves to be on this "kill list," but why? Has he taken an overt action against the U.S. or its military? Or did some random computer algorithm just flag some of his contacts as "suspicious," so we get to kill him?
Without any oversight, what is preventing -- just for an example -- our President from summarily putting an American citizen who happens to spend a lot of time in the Middle East and happens to be in the way of a Trump business deal on the Kill List? How would we know?
Can you guarantee this? We're talking about an extrajudicial targeted killing here. And they're just going to hand him over to the judiciary and "play nice" if he turns himself in?
Obviously you didn't read TFA. Because if you did, you'd learn about the contorted arguments the judge had to go through just to justify a HEARING for this guy. Not a trial -- just a tiny chance that he'll even get to air grievances in court. That's how little power the judiciary seemingly has here... so how can you possibly believe he'd just get a nice fair trial if he turned himself in??
And there's the problem. What's he ACCUSED of?? We don't know. We don't even know if he's on the Kill List. We know the Kill List exists, but only because leaks about it have come out. We know some other American citizens have been put on it in the past.
Even in a wartime summary execution for desertion or something, there has to be a RECORD of what the guy did if he's an American citizen. (And we haven't done that seriously since the Civil War -- and the last case that happened in WWII [wikipedia.org] caused a large amount of public debate.)
Because even if we accept your questionable premise that we're at war and thus we should go around killing American citizens without trial (again, which we haven't really done since the Civil War -- and at least there there was usually the semblance of a military tribunal), don't you think there should be some oversight on the process?? Yes, they can cite "national security" nonsense for not making the entire Kill List public, but shouldn't the extrajudicial targeting and killing of an American citizen at a minimum require a public disclosure of the crimes for which he is accused?
Otherwise, as I said above, what's to prevent a President from targeting someone who is just someone annoying and gets in his way -- a business rival, a competitor in some other way, someone who knows something that could be embarrassing about the President, etc., etc.??
I'm NOT saying this is happening. I'm saying without any oversight or disclosure about what American citizens make it onto this Kill List, how can we have any clue that any of these killings are justified by the supposed "war" you mention, vs. just random targeting for some private executive reason? Shouldn't the public have the ability to at least critique whether the Executive is making good decisions in summarily executing the citizens of its own country????