US: Clarify Position on Targeted Killings | Human Rights Watch

US: Clarify Position on Targeted Killings | Human Rights Watch

Ruling on Targeted Cleric Highlights Need to Explain Legal Basis for Lethal Attacks

December 7, 2010

(New York) - The US government should immediately clarify its legal rationale for targeted killings, Human Rights Watch said in a letter today to President Barack Obama.

A federal court judge's dismissal of a lawsuit on December 7, 2010, challenging the US government's targeted killing program abroad underscores the urgent need for the Obama administration to publicly explain its policy, Human Rights Watch said. Judge John Bates of the US district court in Washington, DC dismissed the lawsuit on procedural grounds but did not address the merits of the case.

"President Obama should answer the fundamental questions of how his administration determines whether a person may be targeted," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "Such operations may be lawful under certain circumstances, but absent clear boundaries, they will inevitably violate international law and set a dangerous precedent for abusive regimes around the globe."

The lawsuit, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights, challenged the US government's decision to authorize the targeted killing of American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to be hiding in Yemen. The US government says al-Awlaki is linked to the Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula but has not brought formal charges against him. The lawsuit also sought to have the government disclose the legal standard it uses to place US citizens on alleged government "kill lists."

The Obama administration dramatically expanded the use of targeted killings outside of traditional battlefields following the attacks of September 11, 2001. Many of these killings are conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency through the use of Unmanned Combat Aircraft Systems (drones). The US government asserts that it has authority under international law to use lethal force outside of clearly defined war zones because it is engaged in a global armed conflict with al Qaeda and associated forces.

Human Rights Watch recognizes that the US government has a responsibility to respond to national security threats. The deliberate use of lethal force can be legal in operations involving a combatant on a genuine battlefield, or in a law enforcement action in which the threat to life is imminent and there is no reasonable alternative.

"US government claims that the entire world is a battleground in which the laws of war are applicable undermine the protections of international law," Roth said. "This discredited notion invites the application of lethal force by other countries in situations where the US would strongly object to its use."

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Legal challenge to US assassination policy divides rights groups | World news | The Guardian

Image via WikipediaLegal challenge to US assassination policy divides rights groups | World news | The Guardian

Civil liberties groups criticised for representing Anwar al-Awlaki, an Islamist cleric targeted by US for assassination

Mark Tran

Anwar al-Awlaki has openly urged followers to kill several people, among them Salman Rushdie. Photograph: AP

Human rights advocates have criticised two US civil liberties groups for mounting a legal challenge to the Obama administration's policy of targeted assassinations by representing the interests of Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemen-based radical cleric.

Last week, the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) began a lawsuit in a federal court in Washington in connection with the US decision to authorise the killing of Awlaki, the only US citizen known to have been targeted for assassination.

The two groups have been retained by Awlaki's father, Nasser al-Awlaki. But a CCR board member has distanced herself from the group's decision to represent Awlaki's interests. Karima Bennoune, a law professor at Rutgers school of law, Newark, New Jersey, has gone public with her misgivings at the CCR's decision, reflecting a debate within human rights groups on how to deal with Islamist fundamentalists.

"I support the important work the centre has done on torture and extraordinary rendition," said Bennoune, "but I expressed grave concern at CCR offering to represent Awlaki's interests pro bono. Anwar al-Awlaki is not a detainee; he is still at liberty and able to gravely harm others by inciting and advocating murder."

Bennoune pointed out that Awlaki published an article in al-Qaida's English language magazine, Inspire, in July openly calling for assassinations of several people, including a young woman cartoonist in Seattle and Salman Rushdie. This was at around the time the CCR was offering to represent Awlaki's father, she said.

Bennoune, who is of Algerian descent, also expressed fears that the CCR and the ACLU were in danger of "sanitising" Awlaki to western audiences.

"Since the inception of the case," she said, "there has been increased mystification of who Anwar al-Awlaki is in liberal and human rights circles in the United States. This may in part have resulted from the fact that a highly reputable organisation like CCR was willing to represent his interests, and described him only as 'a Muslim cleric' or 'an American citizen', and repeatedly suggested that the government did not possess evidence against Awlaki."

The CCR has come under fire in the UK, too. Chetan Bhatt, director of the centre for the study of human rights at the LSE, who was approached by the CCR for advice on Awlaki, said: "I have considerable respect for CCR. But in this case they have made a serious error of ethical judgment. Does a highly respected organisation, founded in the midst of historic struggles for civil rights and racial justice, now wish to be perceived by some as al-Qaida's legal team? Can you fight extra-judicial assassinations by standing alongside someone who advocates extra-judicial assassinations?"

Five prominent Algerian non-governmental organisations, including associations of victims of terrorism and women's groups, have also sent a strongly worded letter to the CCR expressing their dismay that the group has decided to represent Awlaki's interests.

Vincent Warren, executive director of the CCR, argued that his group had actively opposed torture, indefinite detention and targeted killing for years by filing lawsuits against the US government, which few organisations had the capacity to do. "That's what we do," he said. "We file lawsuits. We had a dramatic effect on US policy and the treatment of detainees in Guantánamo."

As for the Awlaki case, Warren said the focus was on US policy and the US government "because we don't believe the US should be wreaking violence for political reasons. It should be up to a court, not just the US government, to decide whether Awlaki poses a threat. The US should not be conducting the killing of US citizens outside the legal process, far away from any battlefield."

The case echoes a dispute in the UK early this year when the head of Amnesty International's gender unit left the group because of its links with Islamist pressure groups. Gita Sahgal fell out with Amnesty after claiming that the charity's links with Moazzam Begg, a former inmate at Guantánamo bay, and his group, Cageprisoners, were undermining its campaign for women's rights.

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Bush's Waterboarding Admission Prompts Calls For Criminal Probe

Bush's Waterboarding Admission Prompts Calls For Criminal Probe

WASHINGTON -- The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday joined a growing chorus in the human rights community calling for a special prosecutor to investigate whether former president George W. Bush violated federal statutes prohibiting torture.

In his new memoir and ensuing book tour, Bush has repeatedly admitted that he directly authorized the waterboarding of three terror suspects. Use of the waterboard, which creates the sensation of drowning, has been an iconic and almost universally condemned form of torture since the time of the Spanish Inquisition.

Except for a brief period during which a handful of Bush administration lawyers insisted that the exigencies of interrogating terror suspects justified its use, waterboarding has always been considered illegal by the Justice Department. It is also a clear violation of international torture conventions.

The ACLU is urging Attorney General Eric Holder to ask Assistant U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate Bush. For nearly three years now, Durham has been acting as a special prosecutor investigating a variety of torture-related matters involving government officials considerably lower on the food chain. Just this Tuesday, it was widely reported that Durham had cleared the CIA's former top clandestine officer and others in the destruction of agency videotapes showing waterboarding of terror suspects -- but that he would continue pursuing other aspects of his investigation.

"The ACLU acknowledges the significance of this request, but it bears emphasis that the former President's acknowledgment that he authorized torture is absolutely without parallel in American history," the group wrote in its letter to Holder.

"The admission cannot be ignored. In our system, no one is above the law or beyond its reach, not even a former president. That founding principle of our democracy would mean little if it were ignored with respect to those in whom the public most invests its trust. It would also be profoundly unfair for Mr. Durham to focus his inquiry on low-level officials charged with implementing official policy but to ignore the role of those who authorized or ordered the use of torture."

In his new memoir, "Decision Points," Bush recalls his thought process after CIA director George Tenet asked for permission to waterboard alleged al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in early 2003. Bush's response: "Damn right."

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The Canadian Press: US rejects call in UN human rights body to abolish death penalty

The Canadian Press: US rejects call in UN human rights body to abolish death penalty

GENEVA — The United States dismissed international calls Tuesday to abolish the death penalty as friends and foes alike delivered their recommendations on how Washington can improve its human rights record.

U.S. State Department legal adviser Harold Koh said capital punishment was permitted under international law, brushing aside long-standing appeals by European countries and others to temporarily halt or completely abolish the death penalty, which critics say is inhumane and unfairly applied.

"While we respect those who make these recommendations, we note that they reflect continuing policy differences, not a genuine difference about what international law requires," Koh told the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council.

The call to abolish the death penalty was repeated throughout the list of 228 recommendations by other nations that formed part of the first comprehensive review of Washington's human rights record before the council.

Other nations also urged the U.S. to reduce overcrowding in prisons, ratify international treaties on the rights of women and children, and take further steps to prevent racial profiling.

Koh said the U.S. was committed to rooting out injustices and would seriously consider some of the recommendations, including one to sign a U.N. declaration on the rights of indigenous people.

But in response to recommendations made by adversaries such as Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, Koh said some proposals were "plainly intended as political provocations, and cannot be taken seriously." He didn't elaborate.

Civil society groups have praised the United States for involving them in the review process, which all U.N. member states have to undergo every four years.

"This international engagement must be followed by concrete domestic policies and actions and a commitment to fixing all domestic human rights abuses, not just the ones that are most convenient," the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's human rights program, Jamil Dakwar, said in a statement.

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ACLU sues city police over 'stop and frisk' | Philadelphia Inquirer | 11/04/2010

ACLU sues city police over 'stop and frisk' | Philadelphia Inquirer | 11/04/2010

Civil rights attorneys filed a federal lawsuit today seeking to have the Philadelphia police department's "stop and frisk" policy declared unconstitutional.

The suit argues that police disproportionately target minorities, often stopping them and frisking them without sufficient grounds.

The suit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and the law firm of Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing & Feinberg.

Among the named plaintiffs are an African-American, Georgetown-educated lawyer who the suit says has been stopped four times since 2008 in West Philadelphia "without probable cause or reasonable suspicion," and a Hispanic University of Pennsylvania ethnographer stopped four times this year in neighborhoods around Kensington without ever facing charges.

Another plaintiff is state Rep. Jewell Williams, who was arrested in 2009 near his North Philadelphia home after he witnessed what he described as overly aggressive police tactics and attempted to intercede.

The lawsuit says pedestrian stops have more than doubled since 2005, to 253,333 in 2009. Of those pedestrians stopped, 72 percent were African-American and only 8 percent led to arrests.

"The majority of these arrests were for alleged criminal conduct that was entirely independent from the supposed reason for the stop and/or frisk in the first place," the suit says.

The plaintiffs are seeking class status and rulings to prevent the police from conducting pedestrian stops based on race or national origin.

The suit also asks the court to order more police training, supervision and monitoring to ensure that "stops, frisks, searches and detentions comport with constitutional requirements."

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US judge blocks Mass. Internet obscenity law - The Boston Globe

US judge blocks Mass. Internet obscenity law - The Boston Globe

A federal judge blocked yesterday a new state Internet obscenity law meant to shield children from sexually explicit material, ruling that the statute was written so broadly that it would criminalize legitimate websites and general electronic communication.

The decision was celebrated by civil rights advocates, but it frustrated prosecutors who have encountered difficulty in convicting Internet predators under outdated laws that fail to cover new technologies.

“Due to this preliminary injunction, we are unable to enforce this much needed law,’’ said Plymouth District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz, whose office prosecuted the online predator case that led to yesterday’s ruling.

In that case, a Beverly man was convicted of sending sexually explicit instant messages to a deputy sheriff posing as a 13-year-old girl. But the convictions were overturned in February by the Supreme Judicial Court, which said Massachusetts law did not cover Internet communication and urged the Legislature to update the statute.

After lawmakers hastily passed new language, a coalition of booksellers and website publishers sued, arguing that the new law would hold criminally liable anyone who operates a website with nudity or sexual material, potentially including a vast range of subjects, from art to health information on pregnancy. They said the law failed to distinguish between open websites and obscene material sent knowingly to a child.

In granting a preliminary injunction against the law yesterday, US District Judge Rya W. Zobel said the plaintiffs demonstrated “without question’’ that the law violated the First Amendment by inhibiting free speech, which civil rights advocates called a clear victory.

“This resolves the cloud that was hanging over Internet communication,’’ said John Reinstein, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, one of the plaintiffs in the case. “This lifts a substantial burden of self-censorship on Internet users.’’

Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office, which helped draft the new obscenity law earlier this year, said it was undecided on whether to appeal the judge’s order or change the law. In a statement, Coakley said her office’s goal is “to ensure that our laws keep up with modern technology in order to protect kids from sexual predators on the Internet.’’

The office “will examine whether a legislative change is necessary to ensure that law enforcement has the necessary tools to protect children online,’’ Coakley said.

Through a spokesman, Coakley declined further comment.

In its case before Zobel, the state argued that the language it added to the obscenity law did not need to specify that it applied only to those who intentionally target minors because a previous SJC ruling had made that clear.

“Both sides agreed the statute would otherwise be unconstitutional,’’ Zobel said.’’

The case dates to February, when the state’s highest court ruled that state law banning people from showing pornography to children and banning bookstores from selling sexually explicit books and magazines to children did not cover “electronically transmitted text’’ or “online conversations.

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ACLU Files Lawsuits After Government Wrongfully Deports U.S. Citizen With Mental Disabilities | American Civil Liberties Union

ACLU Files Lawsuits After Government Wrongfully Deports U.S. Citizen With Mental Disabilities | American Civil Liberties Union

ATLANTA – The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Georgia and the ACLU of North Carolina today filed lawsuits in federal courts in Georgia and North Carolina on behalf of Mark Lyttle, a U.S. citizen of Puerto Rican descent with mental disabilities who was wrongfully deported to Mexico and forced to endure over four months of living on the streets and in the shelters and prisons of Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala.

"What happened to Mark Lyttle is unconscionable," said Judy Rabinovitz, Deputy Director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project. "Our Constitution and our laws demand fair treatment for people with mental disabilities in any court, including immigration courts. Pushing Mr. Lyttle through proceedings that he clearly couldn't understand and then deporting him was not only inhumane but a gross violation of his due process rights. The complete lack of concern for the well being of a man who would have obvious difficulties surviving on his own is truly appalling. What he suffered shouldn't happen to anyone regardless of citizenship status."

Lyttle's entanglement with immigration authorities began when he was about to be released from a North Carolina jail where he was serving a short sentence for inappropriately touching a worker's backside in a halfway house that serves individuals with mental disorders. Despite having ample evidence that Lyttle was a U.S. citizen – including his social security number, the names of his parents, his sworn statements that he was born in the United States and criminal record checks – officials from the North Carolina Department of Correction referred him to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as an undocumented immigrant whose country of birth was Mexico. Lyttle had never been to Mexico, shared no Mexican heritage, spoke no Spanish and did not claim to be from Mexico.

The state of North Carolina has an agreement with ICE requiring state officials to report all incarcerated individuals who they believe were born in other countries. ICE began investigating Lyttle and sent him to the Stewart Detention Facility, an immigration detention center in Lumpkin, Ga. where he spent six weeks.

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Court Issues Decision On Civil Rights Coalition Lawsuit Against Arizona Racial Profiling Law | American Civil Liberties Union

Court Issues Decision On Civil Rights Coalition Lawsuit Against Arizona Racial Profiling Law | American Civil Liberties Union

PHOENIX, AZ – Plaintiffs in Friendly House et. al. v. Whiting et al. won an important legal victory in their constitutional challenge to SB 1070, Arizona’s racial profiling law. Among other things, the court found that the plaintiffs’ claim that “Racial discrimination was a motivating factor for [S.B.] 1070’s enactment” establishes a valid constitutional challenge to the law. This decision was filed in response to the defendants’ motions to dismiss the case and the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction.

Today’s order is an important first step in challenging this unconstitutional law. The civil rights coalition will continue its legal fight until all of SB 1070 is taken off the books.

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ACLU Video: Would You Ask This Man for His Papers? | Immigrant Rights | Change.org

ACLU Video: Would You Ask This Man for His Papers? | Immigrant Rights | Change.org

Barring any last-minute court action from one of the seven lawsuits levied against Arizona's SB 1070, the draconian anti-immigrant law that civil rights groups and law enforcement alike agree will promote racial profiling is scheduled to go into effect this Thursday.

Well, the American Civil Liberties Union has something to say about that. What they want to know is: Would you ask this man for his papers?

Brown skin. Spanish-speaking. Doing lawn work. Nothing says undocumented immigrant quite like those three characteristics, am I right? Watch the video.

The kicker is that the "suspicious" hombre in question is Roberto Reveles, a U.S. citizen and the president of the Board of Directors the ACLU of Arizona.

I can only hope that, if SB 1070 goes into effect, a prominent person like Reveles gets stopped and harassed for his papers. Have you seen the West Wing episode where another Roberto, Supreme Court nominee Roberto Mendoza, gets wrongfully arrested for drunk driving based on the color of his skin? He had to back down and decline to sue the police department in the interest of the "greater good," so he could focus on making it through the confirmation process. That wouldn't be necessary in this case; if Reveles were detained, the ACLU would throw another lawsuit at Arizona so fast it'll make nativist heads spin.

Unfortunately, the many Arizona residents who are vulnerable to harassment and racial profiling under this law, citizen or otherwise, won't necessarily have the ability to stand up against violations of their rights. The ACLU, though, does have another cheeky suggestion for the everyday person on an Arizona street.

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Conservative Group Sues DOJ for Info on Its Decision to Sue Arizona « The Washington Independent

Conservative Group Sues DOJ for Info on Its Decision to Sue Arizona « The Washington Independent

Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, announced today that is has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of Justice to try to get at the government’s reason for suing Arizona over its SB 1070 immigration law. The law’s most controversial provisions, including instructing local law enforcement officers to check immigration status while enforcing other laws, were blocked by a federal judge July 28. Before the case appears before an appeals court in November, Judicial Watch hopes to obtain “any and all communications between the Department of Justice and any third parties.”

Translation: They want to know whether the ACLU and other civil rights organizations that spoke out against the law influenced the DOJ’s decision to file a lawsuit July 6. The DOJ lawsuit was one of seven legal challenges to SB 1070, including a suit filed May 17 by the ACLU and a coalition of civil rights groups.

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White House proposal would ease FBI access to records of Internet activity

White House proposal would ease FBI access to records of Internet activity

The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.

The administration wants to add just four words -- "electronic communication transactional records" -- to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge's approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user's browser history. It does not include, the lawyers hasten to point out, the "content" of e-mail or other Internet communication.

But what officials portray as a technical clarification designed to remedy a legal ambiguity strikes industry lawyers and privacy advocates as an expansion of the power the government wields through so-called national security letters. These missives, which can be issued by an FBI field office on its own authority, require the recipient to provide the requested information and to keep the request secret. They are the mechanism the government would use to obtain the electronic records.

Stewart A. Baker, a former senior Bush administration Homeland Security official, said the proposed change would broaden the bureau's authority. "It'll be faster and easier to get the data," said Baker, who practices national security and surveillance law. "And for some Internet providers, it'll mean giving a lot more information to the FBI in response to an NSL."

Many Internet service providers have resisted the government's demands to turn over electronic records, arguing that surveillance law as written does not allow them to do so, industry lawyers say. One senior administration government official, who would discuss the proposed change only on condition of anonymity, countered that "most" Internet or e-mail providers do turn over such data.

To critics, the move is another example of an administration retreating from campaign pledges to enhance civil liberties in relation to national security. The proposal is "incredibly bold, given the amount of electronic data the government is already getting," said Michelle Richardson, American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel.

The critics say its effect would be to greatly expand the amount and type of personal data the government can obtain without a court order. "You're bringing a big category of data -- records reflecting who someone is communicating with in the digital world, Web browsing history and potentially location information -- outside of judicial review," said Michael Sussmann, a Justice Department lawyer under President Bill Clinton who now represents Internet and other firms.

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