Spiegel: Was Bin Laden's Killing Legal?

[alp227]

...Obama and his predecessor Bush never sought the kind of justice that would have seen bin Laden tried in an international court. As early as his election campaign in 2008, Obama swore he would "kill bin Laden" and finish the job begun by his predecessor after 9/11. "We went to war against al-Qaida to protect our citizens, our friends and our allies," the president explained on Sunday night. A US national security official didn't beat around the bush, telling Reuters, "This was a kill operation." And why shouldn't it be? The very goal of war is the defeat of the opponent, the killing of enemies through legal means. War is war.

In truth, it isn't quite that simple. And not everything that the United States declares to be war really is. Legal experts like Kress say it is "questionable whether the USA can still claim to be engaged in an armed conflict with al-Qaida."

It was certainly still war when Bush began the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Operation Enduring Freedom targeted the Taliban government in Kabul as well as Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization which it backed. At the time, al-Qaida maintained bases and training camps in Afghanistan -- just like a warring party, in fact. The war on terror was understood to be an "asymmetrical war," and the laws of war also permit the targeted killing of non-state combatants, provided they are really combatants who are organized in units with a military-like character, and that they are integrated into those units either as armed fighters or as a leader who issues commands.

Was Bin Laden Still Even Giving Orders?

For years, Osama bin Laden was, without a doubt, a combatant according to the latter definition. Many terror experts today, however, doubt that definition still applied to him in the end. "Al-Qaida has obviously had a network structure for some time. In a network, it isn't clear who gives the orders in individual instances," Kress says. "Outsiders also know very little about al-Qaida's structures in the Pakistani border areas. It is in no way certain that bin Laden still had the authority to issue commands as head of a quasi-military organization."

But if bin Laden was no longer a leader, it would no longer be permissible to treat him as an enemy combatant or kill him.

Full story: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,760358,00.html

[demosincebirth]

1. TS, he's dead.

[Wait Wut]

3. +1

If there's a statute of limitations on the murder of thousands, we need to insist that it be consecutive. 3,000 x ???? = a really long time.

No, I'm not an attorney (really, in case it isn't obvious). Just an American who is glad he's dead.

[dkf]

2. Well they did find another video.

I'd say that closes the case.

[Moosepoop]

4. Lawfare: The Legality of the UBL Operation: Responding to the Der Spiegel Criticism

This article by Thomas Darnstädt, published online by Der Speigel, is getting a lot of attention today. The thrust of the piece is captured by the tagline at the top: “Is this what justice looks like? ….Americans are celebrating, but there are serious doubts about whether the targeted kililng was legal…” The arguments that follow are unpersuasive, in my view, but I think it is important to note and come to grips with them.

Quoting Claus Kress from the law faculty at the University of Cologne, Darnstädt opens with the point that “achieving retributive justice for crimes…is ‘not achieved through summary executions, but through punishment that is meted out at the end of a trial.” But of course the US Government did not purport to be pursuing UBL strictly as a matter of dispensing retributive justice for a past crime; however much rhetoric of justice (inevitably of course) enters into public statements about the operation, it could not be clearer that the government asserts that it is acting in self-defense, consistent with Article 51 of the UN Charter, in attempting to stop al Qaeda from carrying out further atrocities. From this perspective, one wonders if Darnstädt would offer the same criticism of the Clinton Administration’s attempt to kill UBL and other al Qaeda leaders through a targeted missile strike in 1998 in response to the East African Embassy bombings.

More at: The Legality of the UBL Operation: Responding to the Der Spiegel Criticism

[Demeter]

5. Laws? We Don't Need No Steenkin' Laws!

We aren't a nation of laws anymore, so there.