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ofthisandthat Commentary |
Copyright © 2010 ofthisandthat.org.
All rights reserved.
All rights reserved.
June 4, 2013
Innocent Until Proved Dead
If assassinating suspects makes sense overseas, why not at home?
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 4th June 2013
Did the FBI execute Ibragim Todashev? He appears to have been shot seven times
while being interviewed at his home in Orlando, Florida about his connection to one of
the Boston bombing suspects.. Among the shots was the assassin’s hallmark: a bullet
to the back of the head(1). What kind of an interview was it?
An irregular one. There was no lawyer present. It was not recorded(2). By the time
Todashev was shot, he had apparently been interrogated by three agents for five
hours(3). And then? Who knows? First, we were told, he lunged at them with a knife
(4). How he acquired it, five hours into a police interview, was not explained. How he
posed such a threat while recovering from a knee operation also remains perplexing.
At first he drew the knife while being interviewed. Then he acquired it during a break
from the interview(5). Then it ceased to be a knife and became a sword, then a pipe,
then a metal pole, then a broomstick, then a table, then a chair(6,7,8). In one account
all the agents were in the room at the time of the attack, in another, all but one had
mysteriously departed, leaving the remaining officer to face his assailant alone.
If – and it remains a big if – this was an extrajudicial execution, it was one of hundreds
commissioned by US agencies since Barack Obama first took office. The difference in
this case is that it took place on American soil. Elsewhere, suspects are bumped off
without even the right to the lawyerless interview Ibragim Todashev was given.
In his speech two days after Todashev was killed, President Obama maintained that
“our commitment to Constitutional principles has weathered every war”(9). But he
failed to explain which Constitutional principles permit him to authorise the killing of
people in nations with which the United States is not at war. When his Attorney
General, Eric Holder, tried to do so last year, he got himself into a terrible mess,
ending with the extraordinary claim that “’due process’ and ‘judicial process’ are not
one and the same … the Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.”
(10) So what is due process if it doesn’t involve the courts? Whatever the president
says it is?
Er, yes. In the same speech Obama admitted for the first time that four US citizens
have been killed by US drone strikes in other countries. In the next sentence he said “I
do not believe it would be constitutional for the government to target and kill any U.S.
citizen – with a drone, or a shotgun – without due process.”(11) This suggests he
believes that the legal rights of those four people had been respected before they
were killed.
Given that they might not even have known that they were accused of the alleged
crimes for which they were executed, that they had no opportunities to contest the
charges, let alone be granted judge or jury, this suggests that the former law
professor’s interpretation of constitutional rights is somewhat elastic. If Obama and his
nameless advisers say someone is a terrorist, he stands convicted and can be put to
death.
Left hanging in his speech is the implication that non-US citizens may be executed
without even the pretence of due process. The many hundreds killed by drone strikes
(who, civilian or combatant, retrospectively become terrorists by virtue of having been
killed in a US anti-terrorism operation) are afforded no rights even in principle(12,13).
As the process of decision-making remains secret, as the US government refuses
even to acknowledge – let alone to document or investigate – the killing by its drones
of people who patently had nothing to do with terrorism or any other known crime,
miscarriages of justice are not just a risk emerging from the deployment of the
president’s kill-list. They are an inevitable outcome. Under the Obama doctrine,
innocent until proved guilty has mutated to innocent until proved dead.
The president made his rejection of habeas corpus and his assumption of a godlike
capacity for judgement explicit later in the speech, while discussing another matter.
How, he wondered, should the US deal with detainees in Guantanamo Bay “who we
know have participated in dangerous plots or attacks, but who cannot be prosecuted
– for example because the evidence against them has been compromised or is
inadmissible in a court of law”? If the evidence has been compromised or is
inadmissable, how can he know that they have participated? He can suspect, he can
allege, but he cannot know until his suspicion has been tested in a court of law.
Global powers have an antisocial habit of bringing their work back home. The British
government, for example, imported some of the methods it used against its colonial
subjects to suppress domestic protests and strikes. Once an administrative class
becomes accustomed to treating foreigners as if they have no rights, and once the
domestic population broadly accepts their justifications, it is almost inevitable that the
habit migrates from one arena into another. If hundreds of people living abroad can
be executed by US agents on no more than suspicion, should we be surprised if
residents of the United States began to be treated the same way?
George Monbiot’s book Feral: searching for enchantment on the frontiers of rewilding
is published by Allen Lane.
References:
1. A picture of the head wound has been reproduced here: http://www.guardian.co.
uk/world/2013/may/30/father-chechen-man-killed-fbi-inquiry
2. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/31/us/man-tied-to-boston-suspect-said-to-have-
attacked-fbi-agent.html
4. http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2013-05-22/news/os-who-is-ibragim-todashev-
20130522_1_boston-marathon-bombings-chechen
5. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/us/officer-involved-in-shooting-of-man-tied-to-
tsarnaev.html
6. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/yet-another-explanation-for-the-
killing-of-ibragim-todashev/276421/
7. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/31/us/man-tied-to-boston-suspect-said-to-have-
attacked-fbi-agent.html
8. http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/06/01/days-later-fbi-shooting-orlando-
remains-shrouded-government-secrecy/inhTL8hsidG0Tgy5PGKtnM/story.html
9. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/23/obama-drones-guantanamo-speech-
text
10. http://www.justice.gov/iso/opa/ag/speeches/2012/ag-speech-1203051.html
11. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/23/obama-drones-guantanamo-speech-
text
12. International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School
and Global Justice Clinic at NYU School Of Law, September 2012. Living Under
Drones: Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians from US Drone Practices in Pakistan.
http://livingunderdrones.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Stanford-NYU-LIVING-
UNDER-DRONES.pdf
13. http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drones/
Innocent Until Proved Dead
If assassinating suspects makes sense overseas, why not at home?
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 4th June 2013
Did the FBI execute Ibragim Todashev? He appears to have been shot seven times
while being interviewed at his home in Orlando, Florida about his connection to one of
the Boston bombing suspects.. Among the shots was the assassin’s hallmark: a bullet
to the back of the head(1). What kind of an interview was it?
An irregular one. There was no lawyer present. It was not recorded(2). By the time
Todashev was shot, he had apparently been interrogated by three agents for five
hours(3). And then? Who knows? First, we were told, he lunged at them with a knife
(4). How he acquired it, five hours into a police interview, was not explained. How he
posed such a threat while recovering from a knee operation also remains perplexing.
At first he drew the knife while being interviewed. Then he acquired it during a break
from the interview(5). Then it ceased to be a knife and became a sword, then a pipe,
then a metal pole, then a broomstick, then a table, then a chair(6,7,8). In one account
all the agents were in the room at the time of the attack, in another, all but one had
mysteriously departed, leaving the remaining officer to face his assailant alone.
If – and it remains a big if – this was an extrajudicial execution, it was one of hundreds
commissioned by US agencies since Barack Obama first took office. The difference in
this case is that it took place on American soil. Elsewhere, suspects are bumped off
without even the right to the lawyerless interview Ibragim Todashev was given.
In his speech two days after Todashev was killed, President Obama maintained that
“our commitment to Constitutional principles has weathered every war”(9). But he
failed to explain which Constitutional principles permit him to authorise the killing of
people in nations with which the United States is not at war. When his Attorney
General, Eric Holder, tried to do so last year, he got himself into a terrible mess,
ending with the extraordinary claim that “’due process’ and ‘judicial process’ are not
one and the same … the Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.”
(10) So what is due process if it doesn’t involve the courts? Whatever the president
says it is?
Er, yes. In the same speech Obama admitted for the first time that four US citizens
have been killed by US drone strikes in other countries. In the next sentence he said “I
do not believe it would be constitutional for the government to target and kill any U.S.
citizen – with a drone, or a shotgun – without due process.”(11) This suggests he
believes that the legal rights of those four people had been respected before they
were killed.
Given that they might not even have known that they were accused of the alleged
crimes for which they were executed, that they had no opportunities to contest the
charges, let alone be granted judge or jury, this suggests that the former law
professor’s interpretation of constitutional rights is somewhat elastic. If Obama and his
nameless advisers say someone is a terrorist, he stands convicted and can be put to
death.
Left hanging in his speech is the implication that non-US citizens may be executed
without even the pretence of due process. The many hundreds killed by drone strikes
(who, civilian or combatant, retrospectively become terrorists by virtue of having been
killed in a US anti-terrorism operation) are afforded no rights even in principle(12,13).
As the process of decision-making remains secret, as the US government refuses
even to acknowledge – let alone to document or investigate – the killing by its drones
of people who patently had nothing to do with terrorism or any other known crime,
miscarriages of justice are not just a risk emerging from the deployment of the
president’s kill-list. They are an inevitable outcome. Under the Obama doctrine,
innocent until proved guilty has mutated to innocent until proved dead.
The president made his rejection of habeas corpus and his assumption of a godlike
capacity for judgement explicit later in the speech, while discussing another matter.
How, he wondered, should the US deal with detainees in Guantanamo Bay “who we
know have participated in dangerous plots or attacks, but who cannot be prosecuted
– for example because the evidence against them has been compromised or is
inadmissible in a court of law”? If the evidence has been compromised or is
inadmissable, how can he know that they have participated? He can suspect, he can
allege, but he cannot know until his suspicion has been tested in a court of law.
Global powers have an antisocial habit of bringing their work back home. The British
government, for example, imported some of the methods it used against its colonial
subjects to suppress domestic protests and strikes. Once an administrative class
becomes accustomed to treating foreigners as if they have no rights, and once the
domestic population broadly accepts their justifications, it is almost inevitable that the
habit migrates from one arena into another. If hundreds of people living abroad can
be executed by US agents on no more than suspicion, should we be surprised if
residents of the United States began to be treated the same way?
George Monbiot’s book Feral: searching for enchantment on the frontiers of rewilding
is published by Allen Lane.
References:
1. A picture of the head wound has been reproduced here: http://www.guardian.co.
uk/world/2013/may/30/father-chechen-man-killed-fbi-inquiry
2. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/31/us/man-tied-to-boston-suspect-said-to-have-
attacked-fbi-agent.html
4. http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2013-05-22/news/os-who-is-ibragim-todashev-
20130522_1_boston-marathon-bombings-chechen
5. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/us/officer-involved-in-shooting-of-man-tied-to-
tsarnaev.html
6. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/yet-another-explanation-for-the-
killing-of-ibragim-todashev/276421/
7. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/31/us/man-tied-to-boston-suspect-said-to-have-
attacked-fbi-agent.html
8. http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/06/01/days-later-fbi-shooting-orlando-
remains-shrouded-government-secrecy/inhTL8hsidG0Tgy5PGKtnM/story.html
9. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/23/obama-drones-guantanamo-speech-
text
10. http://www.justice.gov/iso/opa/ag/speeches/2012/ag-speech-1203051.html
11. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/23/obama-drones-guantanamo-speech-
text
12. International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School
and Global Justice Clinic at NYU School Of Law, September 2012. Living Under
Drones: Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians from US Drone Practices in Pakistan.
http://livingunderdrones.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Stanford-NYU-LIVING-
UNDER-DRONES.pdf
13. http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drones/