Killing probes the frontiers of robotics and legality :
'War on terror' tag allows US to attack anywhere,
lawyer argues
Brian Whitaker in Cairo and Oliver Burkeman in New York
Wednesday November 6, 2002
The Guardian
The US was accused last night of summarily executing the six
alleged al-Qaida members killed in Yemen on Sunday by the
first act of what experts say could be a new age of "robotic
warfare".
As the embarrassed Yemeni government remained tight-lipped
about the assasination on its soil more details emerged of how
an unmanned CIA predator drone found the six men in a car and
killed them with a Hellfire missile.
It was reported that the Yemeni intelligence service had
monitored them for months, and relayed the information to the
Americans.
Tribesmen in Marib province said a Yemeni air force helicopter
was hovering over the area moments before the explosion
occurred.
Yesterday the Yemeni cabinet issued a brief statement urging
people to unite against "terrorist activities targeting our country,
its people and its national economy", but it refused to say
whether it had given the CIA permission to carry out the attack.
Officials declined to contradict their earlier suggestion that the
deaths might have been caused accidentally by explosives
being carried in the car, whose occupants apparently included
Qaed Senyan al-Harithi, who was suspected of being involved in
the terrorist attack on USS Cole in Aden two years ago.
In Washington officials admitted that the CIA had carried out the
operation.
The Swedish foreign minister, Anna Lindh, told the Swedish
news agency TT: "If the USA is behind this with Yemen's
consent, it is nevertheless a summary execution that violates
human rights. If the USA has conducted the attack without
Yemen's permission it is even worse. Then it is a question of
unauthorised use of force."
Walid al-Saqqaf, editor of the Yemen Times, said: "The Yemeni
government is now in a very weak position. It means they no
longer have sovereignty over the country."
While defence experts said the incident could herald a new era
of robotic warfare, international lawyers debated the legal
implications of the surprising turn in US strategy: killing specific
individuals in countries where there is no war.
"To have a drone that engages and kills people, that is quite a
threshold to cross," Clifford Beal, editor of Jane's Defence
Weekly, told Reuters.
"This is the beginning of robotic warfare. There is underlying
tension in the military about using it. The CIA does not have any
qualms. This is really the first success story of this system."
The Predator drone said to have carried out the attack has a
range of 400 miles and would not necessarily have been
launched in Yemen.
The CIA and the Pentagon refused to comment on its
performance yesterday.
Anthony D'Amato, a professor of international law at
Northwestern University in Chicago, said Yemeni consent would
probably not affect the legality of the attack.
"In a war you have the right to shoot the combatants of the other
side, and one of the things Bush accomplished when he called it
a war against terrorism was to turn questions like this in his
favour."
"In the very earliest days the notion of assassinating a terrorist
in another country would have been questionable, but not after
so many Israeli-Palestinian episodes."
If Washington had substantive evidence that the six were
al-Qaida members, Yemen would effectively be "harbouring"
them, making its consent immaterial according to precedents
established as far back as the Vietnam war.
guardian.co.uk |
