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The legal dilemma over drone strikes: justified killings or war crimes? [View all]
Military lawyers can be intimately involved in life-or-death decisions on the use of drone strikes, authorising attacks long before the button is pushed. They often sit alongside ground-based pilots in remote stations – such as Creech US air force base in Nevada – that control drones thousands of miles away.
Their advice can be critical in deciding whether the risk to civilians of launching a missile are proportionate to the aim of the operation. Deploying drones, defence officials acknowledge, raises thorny legal dilemmas.
International legal action has mostly focused on the US programme of targeted killings by drones in Pakistan's tribal lands, Yemen and Somalia – states where there is no declared war or United Nations-authorised conflict.
"Given the munitions, it is the rare attack that spares the lives of bystanders," says Mary Ellen O'Connell, professor of international law at Notre Dame University, Indiana. She says more than 2,200 people are estimated to have been killed by drones during the three years of the Obama administration in Pakistan alone. She has compared targeted killings by drones to the "excessive use of military force" for which the US condemns President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
The human rights group Reprieve has initiated legal actions in the US on behalf of relatives of those killed in alleged indiscriminate US drone strikes in North Waziristan. (The UK is also under pressure after claims that British security agencies may have been involved through sharing intelligence with Nato allies.) UN experts have called on the US to justify its targeted killings. Christof Heyns, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, summary or arbitrary executions, has alleged some may constitute war crimes.
Their advice can be critical in deciding whether the risk to civilians of launching a missile are proportionate to the aim of the operation. Deploying drones, defence officials acknowledge, raises thorny legal dilemmas.
International legal action has mostly focused on the US programme of targeted killings by drones in Pakistan's tribal lands, Yemen and Somalia – states where there is no declared war or United Nations-authorised conflict.
"Given the munitions, it is the rare attack that spares the lives of bystanders," says Mary Ellen O'Connell, professor of international law at Notre Dame University, Indiana. She says more than 2,200 people are estimated to have been killed by drones during the three years of the Obama administration in Pakistan alone. She has compared targeted killings by drones to the "excessive use of military force" for which the US condemns President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
The human rights group Reprieve has initiated legal actions in the US on behalf of relatives of those killed in alleged indiscriminate US drone strikes in North Waziristan. (The UK is also under pressure after claims that British security agencies may have been involved through sharing intelligence with Nato allies.) UN experts have called on the US to justify its targeted killings. Christof Heyns, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, summary or arbitrary executions, has alleged some may constitute war crimes.
Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/02/drone-strikes-thorny-legal-questions?newsfeed=true
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