Court Dismisses Lawsuit Challenging U.S. Drone Killings of Three Americans
April 4, 2014
WASHINGTON - A
federal district court today dismissed a lawsuit challenging the
constitutionality of the targeted killing of three American citizens by
U.S. drones in Yemen in 2011. The American Civil Liberties Union and the
Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed the case on behalf of the
families of Anwar Al-Aulaqi, Samir Khan, and Al-Aulaqi’s 16-year-old
son, Abdulrahman.
Plaintiff Nasser Al-Aulaqi, the father of Anwar and
grandfather of Abdulrahman, said, “I am deeply disappointed by the
judge’s decision and in the American justice system.What I am asking is
simply for the government to account to a court its killings of my
American son and grandson, and for the court to decide if those killings
were lawful. Like any parent or grandparent would, I want answers from
the government when it decides to take life, but all I have got so far
is secrecy and a refusal even to explain.”
In May, the Obama administration publicly acknowledged
responsibility for the killings, but the Justice Department continued to
argue in court that national security concerns bar any judicial review
of the government’s actions. In response to this broad claim, Judge
Rosemary M. Collyer stated at oral argument that “the executive is not
an effective check on the executive,” and in her opinion, she rejected
the government’s argument that the case presented a “political question”
that prevented the judiciary from hearing it at all. Nonetheless, she
dismissed the case.
Said Center for Constitutional Rights Senior Attorney
Maria LaHood, “Judge Collyer effectively convicted Anwar Al-Aulaqi
posthumously based on the government’s own say-so, and found that the
constitutional rights of 16-year-old Abdulrahman Al-Aulaqi and Samir
Khan weren’t violated because the government didn’t target them. It
seems there’s no remedy if the government intended to kill you, and no
remedy if it didn’t. This decision is a true travesty of justice for
our constitutional democracy, and for all victims of the U.S.
government’s unlawful killings.”
Said ACLU National Security Project Director Hina
Shamsi, one of the attorneys who argued the case,“This is a deeply
troubling decision that treats the government's allegations as proof
while refusing to allow those allegations to be tested in court. The
court's view that it cannot provide a remedy for extrajudicial killings
when the government claims to be at war, even far from any battlefield,
is profoundly at odds with the Constitution. It is precisely when
individual liberties are under such grave threat that we need the courts
to act to defend them. In holding that violations of U.S. citizens'
right to life cannot be heard in a federal courtroom, the court
abdicated its constitutional role."
The case, Al-Aulaqi v. Panetta,was
filed in July 2012 and argued in July 2013. It names as defendants
former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta; former CIA Director David
Petraeus; Adm. William H. McRaven, Commander of the U.S. Special
Operations Command; and Gen. Joseph Votel, Commander of the Joint
Special Operations Command.
In 2010, following press reports that the U.S.
government had put Anwar Al-Aulaqi on government “kill lists,” CCR and
the ACLU filed their previous lawsuit
representing Nasser Al-Aulaqi challenging the government’s authority to
kill his son. The court dismissed that case on the grounds that Nasser
Al-Aulaqi did not have legal standing to challenge the targeting of his
son and that the request for before-the-fact judicial review raised
“political questions” not appropriate for the court to decide.
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