"Rights watchdog groups in the United States have filed a lawsuit seeking greater clarification on the legal rationale being used to justify the Trump administration's targeting of alleged drug trafficking vessels off Latin America. The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the group's New York state affiliate, and the Center for Constitutional Rights, seeks the release of an opinion from the internal Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), which advises the executive branch on legal matters."
"The public deserves to know how our government is justifying the cold-blooded murder of civilians as lawful and why it believes it can hand out get-out-of-jail-free cards to people committing these crimes, Jeffrey Stein, staff attorney with the ACLU's National Security Project, said in a press release. The Trump administration must stop these illegal and immoral strikes, and officials who have carried them out must be held accountable."
"At least 86 people have been killed since the Trump administration announced the first strike in early September, in what the president has depicted as a counter-narcotics effort. A total of 22 declared strikes have been carried out in the Caribbean, even though they are widely considered illegal under both international and US law, since drug trafficking is a criminal activity."
Rights watchdogs filed a lawsuit seeking the release of an Office of Legal Counsel opinion that allegedly justifies strikes on vessels accused of drug trafficking. The lawsuit was brought by the ACLU, its New York affiliate, and the Center for Constitutional Rights. The groups seek legal clarification and accountability for strikes that they say have killed civilians. At least 86 people have died across 22 declared strikes in the Caribbean since early September. The administration portrays the strikes as counter-narcotics and as actions in an armed conflict. Legal experts reject that drug trafficking qualifies as an attack that renders alleged traffickers unlawful combatants.
Read at www.aljazeera.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]