by Julian Ku
From this NYT story, the upcoming report to the U.N. Human Rights Council on U.S. drone strikes seems fairly restrained. The main pushback is to end CIA involvement in drone strikes, on the theory that CIA operatives are not privileged belligerents. This is indeed, the strongest legal argument against drone strike, at least to me, but it seems also pretty easily fixable. Still, I wonder what the rest of the report says? And whether the Obama Administration will heed the calls to change their policy (or indeed, whether this report makes it harder for the to do so).
A senior United Nations official is expected to call on the United States next week to stop Central Intelligence Agency drone strikes against people suspected of belonging to Al Qaeda, complicating the Obama administration’s growing reliance on that tactic in Pakistan.
Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said Thursday that he would deliver a report on June 3 to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva declaring that the “life and death power” of drones should be entrusted to regular armed forces, not intelligence agencies. He contrasted how the military and the C.I.A. responded to allegations that strikes had killed civilians by mistake.