President Barack Obama’s extra-judicial killing of U.S. citizens anywhere in the world “raises profound legal and moral questions” and poses a grave threat to American liberties. This is the word of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) which is objecting to a speech given Monday by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.
Holder, said the Obama Administration believes it has the right to conduct targeted killings of civilians, including American citizens, without judicial review.
“While the speech is a gesture towards additional transparency, it is ultimately a defense of the government’s chillingly broad claimed authority to conduct targeted killings of civilians, including American citizens, far from any battlefield without judicial review or public scrutiny,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s national Security Project. “Few things are as dangerous to American liberty as the proposition that the government should be able to kill citizens anywhere in the world on the basis of legal standards and evidence that are never submitted to a court, either before or after the fact.”
To date, three American citizens have been killed by targeted drone strikes outside the U.S. In each case, the Obama Administration has insisted they were participating in terrorist activities and were enemy combatants.
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