Agorism
10-02-2011, 01:13 PM
ACLU Sued Obama Administration Over Alleged al-Awlaki Assassination Plot
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/08/30/aclu-sues-obama-administration-over-alleged-assassination-plot
You’ve got to tip your hat to the ACLU. The organization will sue anyone along the political spectrum at just about any time. All it takes is a violation of one’s constitutional rights. Of course, it doesn’t hurt if the issue is likely to garner a headline or two.
The organization proved itself once again an equal-opportunity litigant on Monday when it filed suit against the Obama administration over an alleged policy of killing American citizens suspected of terrorism.
Click here for the news story, from Bloomberg’s Andrew Harris; here for the complaint; here for Glenn Greenwald’s take on the suit over at Salon; here for a USA Today story from last week on the subject in the case, Anwar al-Awlaki.
The complaint alleged that targeted assassinations by the federal government are unconstitutional.
“A program that authorizes killing U.S. citizens, without judicial oversight, due process or disclosed standards is unconstitutional, unlawful and un-American,” ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said in a statement announcing the filing of the case.
The group, along with the Center for Constitutional Rights, brought the case on behalf of Nasser al-Awlaki, father of a U.S.-born Islamic cleric in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki, who is accused of having ties to al-Qaeda.
The younger al-Awlaki, who was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, has been marked for death by the U.S. Defense Department and the CIA, according to the organizations.
According to the USA Today story:
The FBI has been keeping an eye on al-Awlaki for years, but he didn’t become a priority until authorities connected him to Nidal Hassan, the Muslim U.S. Army officer charged with killing 13 people in November at Fort Hood in Texas. Hassan e-mailed al-Awlaki for advice several times before the attack, and al-Awlaki has praised him and called on other Muslim soldiers in the military to carry out similar attacks. The FBI has since alleged that al-Awlaki is connected to several terrorist plots . . .
Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the U.S. Justice Department, didn’t immediately return a call from Bloomberg seeking comment on the lawsuit.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/08/30/aclu-sues-obama-administration-over-alleged-assassination-plot
You’ve got to tip your hat to the ACLU. The organization will sue anyone along the political spectrum at just about any time. All it takes is a violation of one’s constitutional rights. Of course, it doesn’t hurt if the issue is likely to garner a headline or two.
The organization proved itself once again an equal-opportunity litigant on Monday when it filed suit against the Obama administration over an alleged policy of killing American citizens suspected of terrorism.
Click here for the news story, from Bloomberg’s Andrew Harris; here for the complaint; here for Glenn Greenwald’s take on the suit over at Salon; here for a USA Today story from last week on the subject in the case, Anwar al-Awlaki.
The complaint alleged that targeted assassinations by the federal government are unconstitutional.
“A program that authorizes killing U.S. citizens, without judicial oversight, due process or disclosed standards is unconstitutional, unlawful and un-American,” ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said in a statement announcing the filing of the case.
The group, along with the Center for Constitutional Rights, brought the case on behalf of Nasser al-Awlaki, father of a U.S.-born Islamic cleric in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki, who is accused of having ties to al-Qaeda.
The younger al-Awlaki, who was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, has been marked for death by the U.S. Defense Department and the CIA, according to the organizations.
According to the USA Today story:
The FBI has been keeping an eye on al-Awlaki for years, but he didn’t become a priority until authorities connected him to Nidal Hassan, the Muslim U.S. Army officer charged with killing 13 people in November at Fort Hood in Texas. Hassan e-mailed al-Awlaki for advice several times before the attack, and al-Awlaki has praised him and called on other Muslim soldiers in the military to carry out similar attacks. The FBI has since alleged that al-Awlaki is connected to several terrorist plots . . .
Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the U.S. Justice Department, didn’t immediately return a call from Bloomberg seeking comment on the lawsuit.