Federal court considers legality of drone strike killings of US citizens
■ On July 19, 2013 in the Federal District Court in Washington, DC, Federal Judge Rosemary Collyer heard arguments concerning a constitutional challenge to the drone strike killings of three U.S. citizens which occurred in Yemen in 2011. The lawsuit was filed last July by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of the relatives of the three US citizens who were killed. ■ Nasser al-Awlaki, the father of Anwar al-Awlaki and grandfather of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, and Sarah Khan, the mother of Samir Khan, charged that the US government violated the Constitution and international law when it targeted Anwar al-Awlaki for extrajudicial killing and carried out the execution by means of drone-fired missiles on September 30, 2011 in Yemen. ■ Samir Kahn, who was reportedly not on the Obama administration’s “kill list” and not targeted, died in the attack on Awlaki, along with two other people. Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, Anwar al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, was killed in a separate drone attack on October 14, 2011 that killed seven people in another part of Yemen. ■ The suit argues that all three killings of US citizens were unlawful because, apart from war, the US Constitution and international law prohibit killing without due process, “except as a last resort to avert a concrete, specific, and imminent threat of death or serious physical injury,” conditions that did not apply to any of the victims. ■ In response to this lawsuit the Justice Department filed a motion to dismiss the case, asserting that the “political questions” doctrine and national security issues bar judicial review.