UN investigator: Halt CIA drone killings
SWITZERLAND : A United Nations investigator called Wednesday
for a halt to CIA-directed drone strikes on suspected Islamic militants,
warning that killings ordered far from the battlefield could lead to a
“Playstation” mentality.
Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions,
said missile strikes could be justified only when it was impossible to
capture insurgents alive.
And only if they were carried out by regular US armed forces
operating with proper oversight and respect for the rules of war. The
Central Intelligence Agency’s use of unmanned Predator or Reaper drones
in Afghanistan and Pakistan against al Qaeda and Taliban suspects had
led to the death of “many hundreds,” including innocent civilians, he
said in a 29-page report.
“Intelligence agencies, which by definition are determined to remain
unaccountable except to their own paymasters, have no place in running
programs that kill people in other countries,” Alston said.
The world does not know when and where the CIA is authorized to kill,
its criteria for choosing targets, whether they are lawful killings, and
how it follows up when civilians are illegally killed, said Alston, an
independent expert who will present his report to the U.N. Human Rights
Council Thursday.
The CIA disputed the investigator’s conclusion.
“Without discussing or confirming any specific action or program,
this agency’s operations unfold within a framework of law and close
government oversight.
The accountability’s real, and it would be wrong for anyone to
suggest otherwise,” a CIA spokesman said.
The United States is among the Geneva forum’s 47 members. Under
President Barack Obama, the CIA has stepped up its drone strikes in the
tribal zone of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan, targeting not only
high-level al Qaeda and Taliban targets but largely unknown foot
soldiers as well. Following a directive first issued by former President
George W. Bush and continued by Obama, the CIA has widened the “target
set” for drone strikes in Pakistan, Reuters reported last month.
Al Qaeda’s third-in-command, Sheikh Sa’id al-Masri, is believed to
have been killed in May in a U.S. missile strike in Pakistan, U.S.
officials said earlier this week.
The United States is believed to control the fleet of drones from CIA
headquarters in Virginia, coordinating with civilian pilots near hidden
airfields in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Geneva, Thursday, Reuters |