13-04-2016, 12:02 PM
Completely fucking with the long established right to a defence if charged with a crime, the UK government's "kill list" jumps straight to guilty and allows politicians and faceless Mandarins to render a verdict of death - a punishment that remains unlawful in the UK.
The following lengthy paper is from Reprieve:
[quote]
OFFICIAL DISSEMBLING IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF A LIST OF PEOPLEWE WANT TO ASSASSINATE AND THE NEED FOR A FULL ANDTRANSPARENT INVESTIGATION
A REPORT BY REPRIEVE
"The sovereign who makes use ofsuch execrable meansshould be regarded as an enemyof the human race."
de Vattel (1758)
BRITAIN'S KILL LIST
CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .................................................................................. 5
1.2.
3.
JPEL Restrictions To Kill Or Not to Kill?...............................14
JPEL Objectives (Targets) Are Chosen Utilising The SameHighly Unreliable Methods Once Used To Place So Many InnocentPeople In Guantánamo Bay.........................................................14
There Is Uncontroverted Proof That There Are JPEL Targets InPakistan, A Country That Has Never Been Even Arguably A WarZone.............................................................................................18
c. the evidence of how JPEL operAtions Are executed refLects thAt,inevitABLy, MistAKes Are Being MAde And onLy through trAnspArencycAn this Be fuLLy evALuAted..................................................................19
IV. MERGING THE "WAR ON TERROR" WITH THE "WAR ON DRUGS": THEEXTRAORDINARY DECISION TO INCLUDE DRUG TRAFFICKERS ON THEJPEL KILL LIST..............................................................................................................20
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1.2.
The British were the rst to suggest that the "War on Terror"should be used as an opportunity to re- ght the "War on Drugs"in Afghanistan and Pakistan........................................................28The basis for including Narco-Traf ckers on the JPEL Kill
List was an inaccurate suggestion that Narcotics was the primarysource of funding for Islamic extremism....................................30
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V. BRITAIN'S DIRECT AND CENTRAL INVOLVEMENT IN IDENTIFYING ANDTARGETING THOSE INCLUDED ON THE JPEL KILL LIST...............................32
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
On September 7th, 2015, Prime Minister David Cameron came to Parliament and announced a "newdeparture" for Britain, a policy of killing individuals the Security Services and the military do notlike, people placed on a list of individuals who the UK (acting along with the US and others) haveidenti ed and systematically plan to kill. The mere admission that there is a Kill List certainlyshould, indeed, have been a "departure" for a country that prides itself on decency. Unfortunately, itwas not a "new departure" at all, as we had been doing it secretly for more than a decade.
Predictably, the Prime Minister chose a deeply unpopular gure Reyaad Khan, a deranged Britishman who had boasted on YouTube of his involvement in ISIS horrors as the rst admitted target ofthis policy. (History teaches us that it has always been easiest for advocates of the death penalty tosell their case to some by highlighting the face of a serial killer who is captured on lm committinghis atrocities.)
But bad cases make bad law, and bad policy. And when the wider facts come to light, sober mindsmay pause.
If there is one lesson we should have learned in the American-led "Global War on Terror", declaredby President George W. Bush in response to 9/11, it is this: It is dangerous to jettison decadesof gradual evolution of human rights and the rule of law in the heat of the emotional moment.Detention without trial in Guantanámo Bay, and torture in Abu Ghraib, were recruiting sergeantsfor extremism. Rendition (a euphemism for kidnapping) drained away goodwill. Droning villagesin Pakistan's tribal areas turned the United States into the region's most hated nation. And theninvading Iraq without a UN resolution helped to create chaos in the Middle East.
Lacking any transparency, so much of the of cial justi cation of these dreadful policies wasessentially propaganda. The detainees in Guantanámo Bay were not the "worst of the worst"terrorists in the world, as promised by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: it took severalyears, but when lawyers eventually reached the prison base, more then 9-in-10 were cleared as "nothreat to the US or its allies." Far from the marvellously precise killing machines that were loudlyadvertised by their proponents, the drones in Pakistan killed an average of nine innocent childrenfor each "High Value Target" singled out for death.
Every time the US has encouraged the world to renounce our basic principles and the UK hasfollowed our hypocrisy has served as the yeast that fomented further radicalism.
In this Report, we consider the Prime Minister's claim that the UK had only just come up with theidea of a terrorist Kill List. First, we now know he deceived Parliament, and the people. Revelationsjust last week by VICE, following up on a case originally investigated by Reprieve, demonstratethat the UK was deeply involved in a Kill List in Yemen, notwithstanding repeated British denials.But the Yemen Kill List was not the rst time the British government dabbled in Twenty-FirstCentury Assassination: today, we reveal shocking and even more disturbing contours of the rstiteration of the British Kill List.
To set it in context, we must consider the evolution in law and morality concerning assassination:what was good enough for the Borgias in the late Middle Ages had already been condemned by theSeventeenth Century as barbaric. Indeed, even in World War Two, with the very existence of thenation under threat, the British eschewed assassinations as unwise as well as immoral: the one timethe British did conspire to assassinate an individual Nazi (Reinhard Heydrich) the reprisals werehorri c, and he was replaced in post by someone even worse. We should pause for re ection before
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we take a course in the "War on Terror" that we rejected when threatened with total destruction inWorld War Two.
This Report demonstrates that Britain conspired in a US-inspired Kill List soon after 9/11. Startingin 2002, working closely with the Americans, Britain had played a leading role in the euphemisticJoint Prioritized Effective List (JPEL). As with Yemen, the JPEL Kill List was not even limited toa war zone it spanned over into Pakistan, which was an ally, not an enemy at war.
The pretext for the Kill List was terrorism. However, the JPEL soon spilled over as British lawenforcement was desperate to use the invasion of Afghanistan to attack the Afghan-Pakistannarcotics trail. Thus, the targets included drug traf ckers, with the "War on Terror" leaking into the"War on Drugs." Britain is a nation with a collective, moral abhorrence for the death penalty evenafter a fair trial, especially for non-violent offenders. It is extraordinary, then, that the JPEL Kill Listallowed for the execution of narcotics traf ckers without a trial at all.
Neither was the Prime Minister the only one to sow deception over the JPEL Kill List. The SeriousOrganised Crime Agency (SOCA) was sued by an Afghan man who lost ve members of hisfamily to an attempted assassination where awed intelligence confused his father-in-law's phonenumber for that of the intended target taking "Sorry you have the wrong number" to a very sadextreme. SOCA appeared in a British court to deny any involvement in the JPEL targeting. ThisReport demonstrates that SOCA's assertions in court were designed to divert attention from the verysigni cant role SOCA (now the NCA) was playing in identifying narcotics traf ckers for inclusionon the JPEL Kill List.
It has been said by an anonymous British serviceman, and it would appear from circumstantialevidence, that other people were included on the Kill List based on perceived criminality linked tomental disorders, such as paedophilia - an extraordinary notion for a country that prides itself onopposing the use of capital punishment.
Indeed, the naming process of the "targets" on the Kill List is extraordinary and would, as theserviceman suggests, horrify the public for the dehumanisation of the process, as well as thepuerile quality of the nomenclature. Some people who are slated for what may be instant death bya Hell re missile are codenamed based on pornography stars, or prophylactics; some are cartooncharacters; some are musicians and actors who might well object to having their names used on aKill List.
Importantly, some codenames re ect different slang for cannabis, suggesting that these individualsare on the list for their narcotics activities. And a series of the names are unique to Britain, suggestingthat these persons were placed on the list by agents of the UK.
The purpose of this Report is not to deliver the last word on Kill Lists, but to demand transparency.Members of the Conservative party rightly criticised the Blair administration for its complicity inthe US torture programmes; if this government now seeks to dragging the UK back to Medievaltimes with an assassination project, it is only right that it should be fully discussed with Parliamentand the public.
- Reprieve, London, April 11, 2016
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I. REVELATIONS IN THIS REPORT DEMONSTRATE THAT PARLIAMENT HASBEEN MISLED, AND HENCE THROUGH NO FAULT OF THEIR OWN THEANTICIPATED REPORT BY THE JOINT COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RIGHTSMAY BE TOO NARROWLY FOCUSED
On September 7th, 2015, Prime Minister David Cameron told parliament that the idea of a "KillList" was a "new departure" for Britain:
[COLOR=rgb(22.400000%, 22.400000%, 22.400000%)]It was, the prime minister conceded in a statement to the House of Commons onSeptember 7th, "a new departure" for Britain. David Cameron said the decision[/COLOR][COLOR=rgb(22.400000%, 22.400000%, 22.400000%)]to target and kill Reyaad Khan in Syria, an Islamic State (IS) ghter from Cardiff,[/COLOR][COLOR=rgb(22.400000%, 22.400000%, 22.400000%)]had been taken at a meeting of the National Security Council some months earlier.[/COLOR][COLOR=rgb(22.400000%, 22.400000%, 22.400000%)]1[/COLOR]
The Government claimed, at the time, that this targeted killing was justi ed on a theory of self-defence.2
That the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) is expected to issue its initial report soon isvery welcome: it is vital that there be transparency in the principles that purportedly guide the UK"Kill List." The recent history of secretive abrogation of long-held principles whether Britain'ssliding back into the abuse of "torture" or turning back the clock to "detention without trial" isdisturbing on many levels, not least of which the fact that politicians have been allowed to takethese retrograde steps without public debate and, seemingly, with no awareness of the hard-learntlessons of History.
However, it would seem clear that the JCHR, along with everyone else, has been misled by the PrimeMinister. The JCHR terms of reference make clear that it believed that drones were only being used"in countries where the UK was involved in an international armed con ict".3 Notwithstanding this,it is undoubtedly true, as Harriet Harman stated, that
[t]he Government's policy on the use of drones for targeted killing has signi cantlychanged, but there is no clarity about what that policy is, what legal frameworkapplies, how decisions are taken in practice and what accountability there is forsuch important decisions about the use of lethal force by the State.4
Yet the Prime Minister had not been forthright with the JCHR, or anyone else. The UK has beendeeply engaged in a "Kill List" for more than a decade. The rst iteration of the Kill List waseuphemistically called the Joint Prioritized Effects List (JPEL); it is still in use, and at any one timeinvolves more than 600 people who are slated for potential "elimination" in Afghanistan and signi cantly - in Pakistan, where Parliament had certainly not authorised intervention in a war,5 any
1 Britain's Jihadi Kill List, The Economist (Sept. 12, 2015), at [COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]http://www.economist.com/news/middle-eas...ill-not-be[/COLOR].
2 When announcing the UK drone strike in Syria to Parliament, the Prime Minister said: "As part of this coun-ter-terrorism strategy, as I have said before, if there is a direct threat to the British people and we are able to stop it bytaking immediate action, then, as Prime Minister, I will always be prepared to take that action. That is the case whetherthe threat is emanating from Libya, from Syria or from anywhere else." Hansard 7 Sep 2015, Column 25 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa...9074000366
3 See The Joint Committee on Human Rights, chaired by Rt Hon Harriet Harman MP, announced an inquiryinto the UK Government's policy on the use of drones for targeted killing, October 29, 2015, at http://www.parliament.uk/business/commit...nce-15-16/
4 Id.
5 There was a branch of the Kill List that later evolved to cover Yemen. This has very recently been the subject
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more than they had in Yemen or, at the time of the Reyaad Khan strike, in Syria.
Meanwhile, in the case of an Afghan man whose ve family members were killed in terrible failureof intelligence, the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA now rebranded as the NationalCrime Agency, or NCA) assured the British courts that it had no role in the targeting of people onthe JPEL kill list. The evidence in this Report demonstrates that this assurance was simply false.
As a result, the discourse in parliament has been - to date - too narrow. It is important that ourelected MPs and the public understand the way in which the UK had been deeply involved in a"Kill List" long before the populist grandstanding by the Prime Minister on September 7th, 2015.The Prime Minister may have believed that the effort to kill notorious individuals like ReyaadKhan would ensure minimal opposition; but what would the British people think if they knew thatthere were hundreds of people on a "Kill List," spilling over from terrorism to narcotics and othercrimes, based on deeply awed intelligence, resulting in numerous civilian casualties? What wouldthey think if, in the words of some close to what is going on, for every person we target and kill,we create "40 to 60" new enemies, because we killed their innocent children and relatives in theprocess?6
This Report is an effort to ll a gap in that knowledge. Ultimately, though, it is up to the Governmentto be transparent if the UK is to have a "Kill List" of people we wish to assassinate.
[IMG]file:///page8image14344[/IMG] of an exposé by VICE, working closely with Reprieve. See Namir Shabibi & Jack Watling, Britain's Covert War in Ye-men: A VICE News Investigation (April 7, 2016), at [COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]https://news.vice.com/article/britains-c...estigation[/COLOR]. The UK government has long said that it had nothing to do with drone assassinations in Yemen andthat what happened there was "matter for the Yemeni and US Governments" who they expected to act in accordancewith international law. Namir Shabibi & Jack Watling, Exclusive: How the UK Secretly Helped Direct Lethal US DroneStrikes in Yemen (April 7, 2016), at [COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]https://news.vice.com/article/exclusive-...s-in-yemen[/COLOR]. However, this is just not true, and has not been since 2010. The former US Ambassador toYemen, Stephen Seche, stated that even though Yemen was not a "war zone" at the time, "[w]e had a targeting list withnames that we could pursue... It was very useful for both [Britain and America] to sit and help triangulate what we werehearing from our different sources." Id. Sadly, the UK has been replicating in Yemen the very mistakes that had beeninitiated in the Afghanistan and Pakistan region eight years before, and that continue to be made to this day.
6 Namir Shabibi & Jack Watling, Exclusive: How the UK Secretly Helped Direct Lethal US Drone Strikes inYemen (April 7, 2016), at [COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]https://news.vice.com/article/exclusive-...s-in-yemen [/COLOR]("Nabeel Khoury, US deputy chief of mission in Sanaa from 2004 to 2007, wrote in 2013 that: Dronestrikes take out a few bad guys to be sure, but they also kill a large number of innocent civilians. Given Yemen's tribalstructure, the US generates roughly 40 to 60 new enemies for every AQAP operative killed by drones.'").
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II. A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SORDID PRACTICE OF ASSASSINATION LISTS
Even if one were to believe that the war in Afghanistan continues long after the UK withdrew,7 itis important to recognize that the JPEL "Kill List" not only targets people who are taking no partin warfare, but also spills over into Pakistan, which is a separate country that is an ally of the USand the UK. Be that as it may, even in warfare, disdain for the use of assassination lists goes backmillennia, although the evolution to what was, fty years ago, legal and moral opprobrium tookhundreds of years.
For example, in their dealings with their enemies, the Romans strongly "disdained all such fraudsand deceptions"8 although they did indulge rather vigorously in domestic assassinations of their ownpoliticians. Likewise, in the Middle Ages there were various notorious examples of assassinationlists being used as political policy:
Although the chivalric code exercised a moderating in uence on the conduct ofwar during this period and into the Renaissance, it failed to dampen the practiceof assassination. The city-states of Italy were particularly notorious. Thus ... "theRepublic of Venice, from 1415 to 1525, planned or attempted about two hundredassassinations for purposes of its foreign policy.9
However, Italian excesses were notorious for the very reason that they were deemed immoral.Even 400 years ago some legal commentators believed that civilization had already developedan absolute prohibition against assassination. In 1612, Alberico Gentili classi ed it as nothingmore than murder. He "considered three possible situations: (1) the incitement of subjects to kill asovereign; (2) a secret treacherous attack upon an individual enemy; and (3) an open attack on anunarmed enemy not on the eld of battle. Gentili concluded that each of these was to be condemned.
He argued:
If it is allowed openly or secretly to assail one man in this way, it will also beallowable to do this . . . by falsehood . . . If you allow murder, there are not methodsand no forms of it which you can exclude; therefore murder should never becommitted.10
Indeed, in words that echo in the 21st century, Gentili recognized that assassination was generallypointless as well as being illegal and immoral, since the calculated murder of a leader would in amethe enemy and only result in the substitution of another leader:
Gentili expressly rejected the suggestion that, by killing a single leader, many otherlives might be saved, believing that such an argument ignored considerations of
7 The last British combat troops left Afghanistan in October 2014, with an extraordinary 68% of British peoplethinking that the sacri ces made by the soldiers were "not worthwhile." Last British troops leave Helmand, BBC (Octo-ber 27, 2014), at [COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29784195[/COLOR].
8 Ward Thomas, Norms and Security: The Case of International Assassination, 25 Int'l Security 105 (2000),http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2626775....eptTC=true.
9 Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, at 225, quoted in Ward Thomas, Norms and Security: The Case of In-ternational Assassination, 25 Int'l Security 105 (2000), at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2626775....TC=true.10 A. Gentili, De Jure Belli Libiri Tres, (1612), reprinted in The Classics of International Law 166 (J. Rolfetrans. 1993), at http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=he...=jour-nals.
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justice and honour. Moreover, he questioned the ultimate result - that is, a newleader would emerge, with followers all the more in amed by their previous leadersdeath.11
Commentators agree that it was around that time some 400 years ago that the rule againstassassination was cemented into general acceptance:
In the early seventeenth century, attitudes toward assassination began tochange dramatically. Historians and political philosophers began to condemnassassination, even of tyrants and religious enemies. Moreover, this change wasre ected in both the rhetoric and actions of the era's political and military leaders,resulting from a marked decline in the number of assassinations and a distaste forthe act that bordered on contempt.12
By the middle of the Eighteenth Century, the rule against assassination was clear:
The norm against international assassination grew stronger as the violence of thereligious wars receded and by the eighteenth century was rmly entrenched ininternational society. In his 1758 treatise on international law, Emmerich de Vattelwrote: "I give, then, the name of assassination to treacherous murder . .. and suchan attempt, I say, is infamous and execrable, both in him who executes it and in himwho commands it.... The sovereign who makes use of such execrable means shouldbe regarded as an enemy of the human race, and all Nations are called upon, in theinterests of the common safety of mankind, to join forces and unite to punish him.13
Likewise, Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of the American Republic, wrote to anotherfounder, James Madison in 1789:
"Assassination, poison, perjury... All of these were legitimate principles in the darkages which intervened between ancient and modern civilizations, but exploded andare held in just horror in the eighteenth century."14
Indeed, when the very existence of Britain was threatened by Napoleon, the condemnation ofassassination was already so well-established that the British government responded very rmly tothe suggestion that the Napoleonic wars could be short-circuited by targeting him directly:
In 1806, when British Foreign Secretary Charles Fox was approached with a planto assassinate Napoleon, Fox not only rejected the offer but arrested the would-beassassin and informed the French foreign minister of the plot.15
In the middle of the Nineteenth Century, the US law of war was clear in its prohibition ofassassination:
13 Emmerich de Vattel, Le droit des gens, p. 289 (1758), quoted in Ward, op. cit. supra.
14 Stephen F. Knott, Secret and Sanctioned: Covert Operations and the American Presidency at 171 (New York:Oxford University Press, 1996), quoted in Ward, op. cit. supra.
15 Ward, op cit. supra.
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The prohibition on assassination was also included in the law of war that beganto be codi ed in the late 1800s . . . Among the most in uential was the U.S. Army'sLieber Code of 1863, which echoed the prevailing view when it stated: "Civilizednations look with horror upon offers or rewards for the assassination of enemies asrelapses into barbarism."16
It is often the exception that proves the rule just as horror at the My Lai massacre underlined thelegal and moral objections to genocide, so (when it came to light) the highly secretive Phoenixprogram illustrated the folly as well as the immorality of a military kill list. Certainly the Phoenixprogram did not achieve its goals; it further provoked Vietnamese opposition, and the US lost thewar.
Indeed, the secretive instances of assassinations by the CIA in Africa and South America led to thespeci c prohibition against assassination. In November 1975, the Senate Select Committee to studyGovernmental Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities issued an interim report on allegedassassination attempts in which it found that the United States Government was implicated in veassassinations or attempted assassinations against foreign government leaders since 1960:17
"It is sometimes asserted, for example, that the United States is exceptionallyaverse to assassination because it does not conform to American values of justiceand fairness. This was the position taken in 1976 by the Church Committee, whichinvestigated the involvement of the CIA in assassination plots. The committeefound fault with assassination because it violates moral precepts fundamental toour way of life . .. [and] traditional American notions of fair play.'"18
Whether it has anything to do with "fair play" or not, there are many historical reasons whyassassinations often create consequences adverse to the assassin's goals. Certainly, the CIA effortsto assassinate Fidel Castro helped to cement his domestic popularity and would have justi ed anumber of illiberal security policies. One result of the Church Committee was Executive Order11905, signed by President Ford on February 18, 1976, which [COLOR=rgb(11.000000%, 11.000000%, 11.000000%)]offered an of cial ban on political[/COLOR][COLOR=rgb(11.000000%, 11.000000%, 11.000000%)]assassination:[/COLOR]
"[COLOR=rgb(11.000000%, 11.000000%, 11.000000%)]No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire toengage in, political assassination."[/COLOR]
In reaf rming and extending President Ford's order, President Carter removed the limitation topolitical acts. President Carter's Executive Order 12036 in 1978 provided:
"No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall
engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination."19
In this way, all assassination was banned. The same wording was used by President Reagan in
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Executive order 12333 on December 4, 1981, and this language is in force today.20
The recent history of Britain's approach to assassination is similar to the US. Even in World War2, the UK was involved in just one direct assassination that of Reinhard Heydrich - and theconsensus is that his death "wasn't worth the countless victims that Nazi terror produced over thefollowing weeks":
[COLOR=rgb(19.200000%, 19.200000%, 19.200000%)]Nazi reprisals were savage. In the village of Lidice, thought to be linked to theassassins, 173 men over the age of 16 were killed, every woman was sent to aconcentration camp, every child dispersed, every building levelled.[/COLOR]
Furthermore, however bad Heydrich had been, his successor turned out to be even more savage.21
Thus, while it is sometimes said that terrorism blurs the line between war and peace, law andpractice have evolved to the point where it is illegal to target individuals on a kill-only list even inwar.22 The UK was accused of such a policy in dealing with the IRA, and the policy in operation atthe time was found to have been illegal.23
Regardless, in the case of the JPEL Kill List, the pretext of terrorism cannot be used to target thosewho are better de ned as simple criminals, such as drug traf ckers.
Most worryingly, perhaps, because of the politically expedient de nition of terrorism, nations thatdo not adhere closely to the rule of law may rather rapidly stretch the most de ned "Kill List" totheir own purposes:
[COLOR=rgb(19.200000%, 19.200000%, 19.200000%)]If America can legitimately kill its citizens in Yemen, why can't Russia do the samein London? A few wonder if it already has, pointing to the poisoning of AlexanderLitvinenko.[/COLOR][COLOR=rgb(19.200000%, 19.200000%, 19.200000%)]24[/COLOR]
And, waiting in the wings, many other countries would like to have their own Kill Lists.
III. THE FIRST 21ST CENTURY UK KILL LIST: JPEL IN AFGHANISTAN ANDPAKISTAN
It transpires that, long before the Prime Minister told parliament of a "new departure" in Britishpolicy involving the killing of Reyaad Khan in Syria, the UK had been deeply involved in developingand executing a Kill List in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a list that remains active.
A. A Brief Introduction To The JPEL List
The iteration of the Joint Prioritized Effects List (JPEL),25 part of the Edward Snowden les, is from
20 See Reagan [COLOR=rgb(14.100000%, 14.100000%, 13.700000%)]Executive Order 12333--United States intelligence activities Source: The provisions of ExecutiveOrder 12333 of Dec. 4, 1981, appear at 46 FR 59941, 3 CFR, 1981 Comp., p. 200: "2.11Prohibition on Assassination.No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in,assassination." [/COLOR][COLOR=rgb(14.100000%, 14.100000%, 13.700000%)]http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codi cation/executive-order/12333.html[/COLOR][COLOR=rgb(14.100000%, 14.100000%, 13.700000%)].[/COLOR]
21 Gordon Corera, BBC Security Correspondent, [COLOR=rgb(9.000000%, 9.000000%, 9.000000%)]Licence to kill: When governments choose to assassinate[/COLOR][COLOR=rgb(9.000000%, 9.000000%, 9.000000%)](March 17, 2012), at [/COLOR]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17353379.
22 Geneva Conventions Protocol I, §40 ("It is prohibited to order that there shall be no survivors, to threaten anadversary therewith or to conduct hostilities on this basis").
23 McCann v. United Kingdom, 21 ECHR 97 GC (1995).
24 Corera, [COLOR=rgb(9.000000%, 9.000000%, 9.000000%)]Licence to kill, supra[/COLOR].
25 [COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35508.pdf[/COLOR]
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August 2010, and includes 669 targets. Since the list has been in effect since 2002, and is updatedmonthly, it is fair to assume that in its entirety, thousands of individuals have been included on theJPEL Kill List at one time or another.
The JPEL list is still in use today. In September 2015, the New York Times ran an investigationalleging that two European countries Germany and Sweden were "directly participating in so-called kill decisions against insurgents in Afghanistan despite rules prohibiting them from doingso."26 One of cial said: "They were sitting around there giving thumbs up or down, like gladiatorsin a stadium." Sadly, we now know that this is what has been happening for 14 years, and Britishthumbs have frequently been turned down, for death.
The list very clearly shows that its targets are not limited only to those in Afghanistan, but that theyalso include Pakistani targets in Pakistan. Equally important, these Pakistani targets were eitherplaced on the list by the UK (i.e. the Target nominating force) or the UK is the force tasked as leadagency in their targeting, or both.
The JPEL divided people into those who should be used for intelligence, those who should becaptured, those who may be either captured or killed, and those who should only be killed.27 The"Kill Only" tag is further corroborated by "a top [US] military expert":
"the Pentagon has created elaborate formulas to help the military make suchlethal calculations. A top military expert, who declined to be named, spoke of themilitary's system, saying, "There's a whole taxonomy of targets." Some people areapproved for killing on sight."28
The US has always claimed that lists such as JPEL only target the worst of the worst', the socalledHigh-Value Targets (HVTs).29 The JPEL list, however, proves otherwise; rather, the US, the UK andother allies were also going after mid- and low-level members of the Taliban on a large scale, such alarge scale that the list at any time included hundreds of people. Furthermore, amongst those on thelist are alleged drug dealers and paedophiles, included on the pretext that they are associated withthe insurgents.30 (Much more about them below.)
B. How The JPEL Kill List Operates
There are a number of issues that arise from an analysis of the JPEL list involving how people are
listed to be killed, and the unreliable intelligence that forms the basis for any designation.1. JPEL Restrictions To Kill Or Not to Kill?
There are various options on the JPEL menus. Indeed, it is described as a "whole taxonomy oftargets".31 Of the 669, some 127 are subject only to monitoring or intelligence collection.32 Beyond
28 Jane Mayer, The Predator War, The New Yorker (Oct. 26, 2009), at http://www.newyorker.com/maga-zine/2009/...edator-war (emphasis supplied).
29 US Military Joint Publication 3-60 (31 Jan. 2013), 2015_06_23_PUB Joint Targeting.pdf, at I-9.
30 http://www.spiegel.de/international/worl...10358.html.
31 Id.
32 These are JPEL ##96, 264, 316, 376, 377, 378, 379, 522-533, 535-542, 544-559, 561, 563-571, 573-575,
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this, there are 31 people who are subject to capture only, not killing.33 Among these, just two (JPEL217, 623) are subject only to "non lethal action capture only" in other words, lives may be takenin capturing the others. Some are "kill only" a patent violation of International Humanitarian Law(IHL) and International Human Rights Law (IHRL).
Certain JPEL targets were to be kept secret from the Afghans, presumably because of corruptionwithin the authorities.34 However, if people were captured and turned over to the Afghan authorities,there was every chance that they would be tortured.35
Of the 669 targets, 657 were subject to a 90-day rule. In other words, the "authorization" for"executing" whatever the directions are for the individual remained good for 90 days. However,12 are exempt from the 90-day rule altogether.36 With these, the tautological "imminence" of thedanger they pose if killed is extended inde nitely.
[FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT]1
The following lengthy paper is from Reprieve:
[quote]
OFFICIAL DISSEMBLING IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF A LIST OF PEOPLEWE WANT TO ASSASSINATE AND THE NEED FOR A FULL ANDTRANSPARENT INVESTIGATION
A REPORT BY REPRIEVE
"The sovereign who makes use ofsuch execrable meansshould be regarded as an enemyof the human race."
de Vattel (1758)
BRITAIN'S KILL LIST
CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .................................................................................. 5
- REVELATIONS IN THIS REPORT DEMONSTRATE THAT PARLIAMENT
HAS BEEN MISLED, AND HENCE THROUGH NO FAULT OF THEIR OWNTHE ANTICIPATED REPORT BY THE JOINT COMMITTEE ON
HUMAN RIGHTS MAY BE TOO NARROWLY FOCUSED.......................................7
- A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SORDID PRACTICE OF ASSASSINATION LISTS..9
- THE FIRST 21ST CENTURY UK KILL LIST: JPEL IN AFGHANISTAN ANDPAKISTAN.........................................................................................................................12A. A Brief introduction to the JPEL List ................................................13B. how the JPEL KiLL List operAtes..........................................................13
1.2.
3.
JPEL Restrictions To Kill Or Not to Kill?...............................14
JPEL Objectives (Targets) Are Chosen Utilising The SameHighly Unreliable Methods Once Used To Place So Many InnocentPeople In Guantánamo Bay.........................................................14
There Is Uncontroverted Proof That There Are JPEL Targets InPakistan, A Country That Has Never Been Even Arguably A WarZone.............................................................................................18
c. the evidence of how JPEL operAtions Are executed refLects thAt,inevitABLy, MistAKes Are Being MAde And onLy through trAnspArencycAn this Be fuLLy evALuAted..................................................................19
IV. MERGING THE "WAR ON TERROR" WITH THE "WAR ON DRUGS": THEEXTRAORDINARY DECISION TO INCLUDE DRUG TRAFFICKERS ON THEJPEL KILL LIST..............................................................................................................20
- the united stAtes historicALLy confLAted the "wAr on drugs" withterrorisM Long Before 9/11...................................................................21
- vArious Agencies with A vested interest in Merging the "wAr onterror" with the "wAr on drugs" pressed to view BAttLingnArcotics As integrAL to fighting terrorisM on the theory thAtnArcotics profits were supporting terror...........................................22
- Those who wish to merge the "War on Terror" with the "War on
Drugs" point to a mainly ctional overlap between narcotics and
Islamic Terrorism.........................................................................23
- Those determined to promote a joint "War on Terror and Drugs"
rely on a long-fostered and established American fear of
the impact of Drugs.....................................................................25
- Those who wish to merge the "War on Terror" with the "War on
Reprieve, April 2016
3
1.2.
The British were the rst to suggest that the "War on Terror"should be used as an opportunity to re- ght the "War on Drugs"in Afghanistan and Pakistan........................................................28The basis for including Narco-Traf ckers on the JPEL Kill
List was an inaccurate suggestion that Narcotics was the primarysource of funding for Islamic extremism....................................30
BRITAIN'S KILL LIST
V. BRITAIN'S DIRECT AND CENTRAL INVOLVEMENT IN IDENTIFYING ANDTARGETING THOSE INCLUDED ON THE JPEL KILL LIST...............................32
- the evidence of cLose cooperAtion Between the British And theAMericAns in identifying And tArgeting those on the JpeL List.......32
- cLose worK Between the uK And the Asnf ALso resuLts inexecutions of tArgets on the JpeL KiLL List.....................................34
- ADDITIONAL CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE THAT MAY BE GLEANEDFROM THE CRUDE NAMES USED IN THE JPEL KILL LIST..............................36
- circuMstAntiAL evidence thAt MAy Be derived froM the JpeLoperAtions And oBJectives (tArgets) nAMes.........................................37
- vArious words refLect the dehuMAnisAtion of the peopLe on theJPEL List.................................................................................................47
- circuMstAntiAL evidence thAt MAy Be derived froM the JpeLoperAtions And oBJectives (tArgets) nAMes.........................................37
- BRITISH INVOLVEMENT IN THE JPEL LIST DISSEMBLING TO A BRITISHJUDGE BY SOCA (NOW REBRANDED AS THE NCA)...........................................48
- POTENTIAL LESSONS TO BE LEARNED FROM THE CONFLATION OF THE"WAR ON TERROR" WITH THE "WAR ON DRUGS"............................................54
- CONCLUSIONS................................................................................................................56
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
On September 7th, 2015, Prime Minister David Cameron came to Parliament and announced a "newdeparture" for Britain, a policy of killing individuals the Security Services and the military do notlike, people placed on a list of individuals who the UK (acting along with the US and others) haveidenti ed and systematically plan to kill. The mere admission that there is a Kill List certainlyshould, indeed, have been a "departure" for a country that prides itself on decency. Unfortunately, itwas not a "new departure" at all, as we had been doing it secretly for more than a decade.
Predictably, the Prime Minister chose a deeply unpopular gure Reyaad Khan, a deranged Britishman who had boasted on YouTube of his involvement in ISIS horrors as the rst admitted target ofthis policy. (History teaches us that it has always been easiest for advocates of the death penalty tosell their case to some by highlighting the face of a serial killer who is captured on lm committinghis atrocities.)
But bad cases make bad law, and bad policy. And when the wider facts come to light, sober mindsmay pause.
If there is one lesson we should have learned in the American-led "Global War on Terror", declaredby President George W. Bush in response to 9/11, it is this: It is dangerous to jettison decadesof gradual evolution of human rights and the rule of law in the heat of the emotional moment.Detention without trial in Guantanámo Bay, and torture in Abu Ghraib, were recruiting sergeantsfor extremism. Rendition (a euphemism for kidnapping) drained away goodwill. Droning villagesin Pakistan's tribal areas turned the United States into the region's most hated nation. And theninvading Iraq without a UN resolution helped to create chaos in the Middle East.
Lacking any transparency, so much of the of cial justi cation of these dreadful policies wasessentially propaganda. The detainees in Guantanámo Bay were not the "worst of the worst"terrorists in the world, as promised by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: it took severalyears, but when lawyers eventually reached the prison base, more then 9-in-10 were cleared as "nothreat to the US or its allies." Far from the marvellously precise killing machines that were loudlyadvertised by their proponents, the drones in Pakistan killed an average of nine innocent childrenfor each "High Value Target" singled out for death.
Every time the US has encouraged the world to renounce our basic principles and the UK hasfollowed our hypocrisy has served as the yeast that fomented further radicalism.
In this Report, we consider the Prime Minister's claim that the UK had only just come up with theidea of a terrorist Kill List. First, we now know he deceived Parliament, and the people. Revelationsjust last week by VICE, following up on a case originally investigated by Reprieve, demonstratethat the UK was deeply involved in a Kill List in Yemen, notwithstanding repeated British denials.But the Yemen Kill List was not the rst time the British government dabbled in Twenty-FirstCentury Assassination: today, we reveal shocking and even more disturbing contours of the rstiteration of the British Kill List.
To set it in context, we must consider the evolution in law and morality concerning assassination:what was good enough for the Borgias in the late Middle Ages had already been condemned by theSeventeenth Century as barbaric. Indeed, even in World War Two, with the very existence of thenation under threat, the British eschewed assassinations as unwise as well as immoral: the one timethe British did conspire to assassinate an individual Nazi (Reinhard Heydrich) the reprisals werehorri c, and he was replaced in post by someone even worse. We should pause for re ection before
Reprieve, April 2016 5
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we take a course in the "War on Terror" that we rejected when threatened with total destruction inWorld War Two.
This Report demonstrates that Britain conspired in a US-inspired Kill List soon after 9/11. Startingin 2002, working closely with the Americans, Britain had played a leading role in the euphemisticJoint Prioritized Effective List (JPEL). As with Yemen, the JPEL Kill List was not even limited toa war zone it spanned over into Pakistan, which was an ally, not an enemy at war.
The pretext for the Kill List was terrorism. However, the JPEL soon spilled over as British lawenforcement was desperate to use the invasion of Afghanistan to attack the Afghan-Pakistannarcotics trail. Thus, the targets included drug traf ckers, with the "War on Terror" leaking into the"War on Drugs." Britain is a nation with a collective, moral abhorrence for the death penalty evenafter a fair trial, especially for non-violent offenders. It is extraordinary, then, that the JPEL Kill Listallowed for the execution of narcotics traf ckers without a trial at all.
Neither was the Prime Minister the only one to sow deception over the JPEL Kill List. The SeriousOrganised Crime Agency (SOCA) was sued by an Afghan man who lost ve members of hisfamily to an attempted assassination where awed intelligence confused his father-in-law's phonenumber for that of the intended target taking "Sorry you have the wrong number" to a very sadextreme. SOCA appeared in a British court to deny any involvement in the JPEL targeting. ThisReport demonstrates that SOCA's assertions in court were designed to divert attention from the verysigni cant role SOCA (now the NCA) was playing in identifying narcotics traf ckers for inclusionon the JPEL Kill List.
It has been said by an anonymous British serviceman, and it would appear from circumstantialevidence, that other people were included on the Kill List based on perceived criminality linked tomental disorders, such as paedophilia - an extraordinary notion for a country that prides itself onopposing the use of capital punishment.
Indeed, the naming process of the "targets" on the Kill List is extraordinary and would, as theserviceman suggests, horrify the public for the dehumanisation of the process, as well as thepuerile quality of the nomenclature. Some people who are slated for what may be instant death bya Hell re missile are codenamed based on pornography stars, or prophylactics; some are cartooncharacters; some are musicians and actors who might well object to having their names used on aKill List.
Importantly, some codenames re ect different slang for cannabis, suggesting that these individualsare on the list for their narcotics activities. And a series of the names are unique to Britain, suggestingthat these persons were placed on the list by agents of the UK.
The purpose of this Report is not to deliver the last word on Kill Lists, but to demand transparency.Members of the Conservative party rightly criticised the Blair administration for its complicity inthe US torture programmes; if this government now seeks to dragging the UK back to Medievaltimes with an assassination project, it is only right that it should be fully discussed with Parliamentand the public.
- Reprieve, London, April 11, 2016
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I. REVELATIONS IN THIS REPORT DEMONSTRATE THAT PARLIAMENT HASBEEN MISLED, AND HENCE THROUGH NO FAULT OF THEIR OWN THEANTICIPATED REPORT BY THE JOINT COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RIGHTSMAY BE TOO NARROWLY FOCUSED
On September 7th, 2015, Prime Minister David Cameron told parliament that the idea of a "KillList" was a "new departure" for Britain:
[COLOR=rgb(22.400000%, 22.400000%, 22.400000%)]It was, the prime minister conceded in a statement to the House of Commons onSeptember 7th, "a new departure" for Britain. David Cameron said the decision[/COLOR][COLOR=rgb(22.400000%, 22.400000%, 22.400000%)]to target and kill Reyaad Khan in Syria, an Islamic State (IS) ghter from Cardiff,[/COLOR][COLOR=rgb(22.400000%, 22.400000%, 22.400000%)]had been taken at a meeting of the National Security Council some months earlier.[/COLOR][COLOR=rgb(22.400000%, 22.400000%, 22.400000%)]1[/COLOR]
The Government claimed, at the time, that this targeted killing was justi ed on a theory of self-defence.2
That the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) is expected to issue its initial report soon isvery welcome: it is vital that there be transparency in the principles that purportedly guide the UK"Kill List." The recent history of secretive abrogation of long-held principles whether Britain'ssliding back into the abuse of "torture" or turning back the clock to "detention without trial" isdisturbing on many levels, not least of which the fact that politicians have been allowed to takethese retrograde steps without public debate and, seemingly, with no awareness of the hard-learntlessons of History.
However, it would seem clear that the JCHR, along with everyone else, has been misled by the PrimeMinister. The JCHR terms of reference make clear that it believed that drones were only being used"in countries where the UK was involved in an international armed con ict".3 Notwithstanding this,it is undoubtedly true, as Harriet Harman stated, that
[t]he Government's policy on the use of drones for targeted killing has signi cantlychanged, but there is no clarity about what that policy is, what legal frameworkapplies, how decisions are taken in practice and what accountability there is forsuch important decisions about the use of lethal force by the State.4
Yet the Prime Minister had not been forthright with the JCHR, or anyone else. The UK has beendeeply engaged in a "Kill List" for more than a decade. The rst iteration of the Kill List waseuphemistically called the Joint Prioritized Effects List (JPEL); it is still in use, and at any one timeinvolves more than 600 people who are slated for potential "elimination" in Afghanistan and signi cantly - in Pakistan, where Parliament had certainly not authorised intervention in a war,5 any
1 Britain's Jihadi Kill List, The Economist (Sept. 12, 2015), at [COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]http://www.economist.com/news/middle-eas...ill-not-be[/COLOR].
2 When announcing the UK drone strike in Syria to Parliament, the Prime Minister said: "As part of this coun-ter-terrorism strategy, as I have said before, if there is a direct threat to the British people and we are able to stop it bytaking immediate action, then, as Prime Minister, I will always be prepared to take that action. That is the case whetherthe threat is emanating from Libya, from Syria or from anywhere else." Hansard 7 Sep 2015, Column 25 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa...9074000366
3 See The Joint Committee on Human Rights, chaired by Rt Hon Harriet Harman MP, announced an inquiryinto the UK Government's policy on the use of drones for targeted killing, October 29, 2015, at http://www.parliament.uk/business/commit...nce-15-16/
4 Id.
5 There was a branch of the Kill List that later evolved to cover Yemen. This has very recently been the subject
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more than they had in Yemen or, at the time of the Reyaad Khan strike, in Syria.
Meanwhile, in the case of an Afghan man whose ve family members were killed in terrible failureof intelligence, the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA now rebranded as the NationalCrime Agency, or NCA) assured the British courts that it had no role in the targeting of people onthe JPEL kill list. The evidence in this Report demonstrates that this assurance was simply false.
As a result, the discourse in parliament has been - to date - too narrow. It is important that ourelected MPs and the public understand the way in which the UK had been deeply involved in a"Kill List" long before the populist grandstanding by the Prime Minister on September 7th, 2015.The Prime Minister may have believed that the effort to kill notorious individuals like ReyaadKhan would ensure minimal opposition; but what would the British people think if they knew thatthere were hundreds of people on a "Kill List," spilling over from terrorism to narcotics and othercrimes, based on deeply awed intelligence, resulting in numerous civilian casualties? What wouldthey think if, in the words of some close to what is going on, for every person we target and kill,we create "40 to 60" new enemies, because we killed their innocent children and relatives in theprocess?6
This Report is an effort to ll a gap in that knowledge. Ultimately, though, it is up to the Governmentto be transparent if the UK is to have a "Kill List" of people we wish to assassinate.
[IMG]file:///page8image14344[/IMG] of an exposé by VICE, working closely with Reprieve. See Namir Shabibi & Jack Watling, Britain's Covert War in Ye-men: A VICE News Investigation (April 7, 2016), at [COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]https://news.vice.com/article/britains-c...estigation[/COLOR]. The UK government has long said that it had nothing to do with drone assassinations in Yemen andthat what happened there was "matter for the Yemeni and US Governments" who they expected to act in accordancewith international law. Namir Shabibi & Jack Watling, Exclusive: How the UK Secretly Helped Direct Lethal US DroneStrikes in Yemen (April 7, 2016), at [COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]https://news.vice.com/article/exclusive-...s-in-yemen[/COLOR]. However, this is just not true, and has not been since 2010. The former US Ambassador toYemen, Stephen Seche, stated that even though Yemen was not a "war zone" at the time, "[w]e had a targeting list withnames that we could pursue... It was very useful for both [Britain and America] to sit and help triangulate what we werehearing from our different sources." Id. Sadly, the UK has been replicating in Yemen the very mistakes that had beeninitiated in the Afghanistan and Pakistan region eight years before, and that continue to be made to this day.
6 Namir Shabibi & Jack Watling, Exclusive: How the UK Secretly Helped Direct Lethal US Drone Strikes inYemen (April 7, 2016), at [COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]https://news.vice.com/article/exclusive-...s-in-yemen [/COLOR]("Nabeel Khoury, US deputy chief of mission in Sanaa from 2004 to 2007, wrote in 2013 that: Dronestrikes take out a few bad guys to be sure, but they also kill a large number of innocent civilians. Given Yemen's tribalstructure, the US generates roughly 40 to 60 new enemies for every AQAP operative killed by drones.'").
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II. A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SORDID PRACTICE OF ASSASSINATION LISTS
Even if one were to believe that the war in Afghanistan continues long after the UK withdrew,7 itis important to recognize that the JPEL "Kill List" not only targets people who are taking no partin warfare, but also spills over into Pakistan, which is a separate country that is an ally of the USand the UK. Be that as it may, even in warfare, disdain for the use of assassination lists goes backmillennia, although the evolution to what was, fty years ago, legal and moral opprobrium tookhundreds of years.
For example, in their dealings with their enemies, the Romans strongly "disdained all such fraudsand deceptions"8 although they did indulge rather vigorously in domestic assassinations of their ownpoliticians. Likewise, in the Middle Ages there were various notorious examples of assassinationlists being used as political policy:
Although the chivalric code exercised a moderating in uence on the conduct ofwar during this period and into the Renaissance, it failed to dampen the practiceof assassination. The city-states of Italy were particularly notorious. Thus ... "theRepublic of Venice, from 1415 to 1525, planned or attempted about two hundredassassinations for purposes of its foreign policy.9
However, Italian excesses were notorious for the very reason that they were deemed immoral.Even 400 years ago some legal commentators believed that civilization had already developedan absolute prohibition against assassination. In 1612, Alberico Gentili classi ed it as nothingmore than murder. He "considered three possible situations: (1) the incitement of subjects to kill asovereign; (2) a secret treacherous attack upon an individual enemy; and (3) an open attack on anunarmed enemy not on the eld of battle. Gentili concluded that each of these was to be condemned.
He argued:
If it is allowed openly or secretly to assail one man in this way, it will also beallowable to do this . . . by falsehood . . . If you allow murder, there are not methodsand no forms of it which you can exclude; therefore murder should never becommitted.10
Indeed, in words that echo in the 21st century, Gentili recognized that assassination was generallypointless as well as being illegal and immoral, since the calculated murder of a leader would in amethe enemy and only result in the substitution of another leader:
Gentili expressly rejected the suggestion that, by killing a single leader, many otherlives might be saved, believing that such an argument ignored considerations of
7 The last British combat troops left Afghanistan in October 2014, with an extraordinary 68% of British peoplethinking that the sacri ces made by the soldiers were "not worthwhile." Last British troops leave Helmand, BBC (Octo-ber 27, 2014), at [COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29784195[/COLOR].
8 Ward Thomas, Norms and Security: The Case of International Assassination, 25 Int'l Security 105 (2000),http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2626775....eptTC=true.
9 Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, at 225, quoted in Ward Thomas, Norms and Security: The Case of In-ternational Assassination, 25 Int'l Security 105 (2000), at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2626775....TC=true.10 A. Gentili, De Jure Belli Libiri Tres, (1612), reprinted in The Classics of International Law 166 (J. Rolfetrans. 1993), at http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=he...=jour-nals.
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justice and honour. Moreover, he questioned the ultimate result - that is, a newleader would emerge, with followers all the more in amed by their previous leadersdeath.11
Commentators agree that it was around that time some 400 years ago that the rule againstassassination was cemented into general acceptance:
In the early seventeenth century, attitudes toward assassination began tochange dramatically. Historians and political philosophers began to condemnassassination, even of tyrants and religious enemies. Moreover, this change wasre ected in both the rhetoric and actions of the era's political and military leaders,resulting from a marked decline in the number of assassinations and a distaste forthe act that bordered on contempt.12
By the middle of the Eighteenth Century, the rule against assassination was clear:
The norm against international assassination grew stronger as the violence of thereligious wars receded and by the eighteenth century was rmly entrenched ininternational society. In his 1758 treatise on international law, Emmerich de Vattelwrote: "I give, then, the name of assassination to treacherous murder . .. and suchan attempt, I say, is infamous and execrable, both in him who executes it and in himwho commands it.... The sovereign who makes use of such execrable means shouldbe regarded as an enemy of the human race, and all Nations are called upon, in theinterests of the common safety of mankind, to join forces and unite to punish him.13
Likewise, Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of the American Republic, wrote to anotherfounder, James Madison in 1789:
"Assassination, poison, perjury... All of these were legitimate principles in the darkages which intervened between ancient and modern civilizations, but exploded andare held in just horror in the eighteenth century."14
Indeed, when the very existence of Britain was threatened by Napoleon, the condemnation ofassassination was already so well-established that the British government responded very rmly tothe suggestion that the Napoleonic wars could be short-circuited by targeting him directly:
In 1806, when British Foreign Secretary Charles Fox was approached with a planto assassinate Napoleon, Fox not only rejected the offer but arrested the would-beassassin and informed the French foreign minister of the plot.15
In the middle of the Nineteenth Century, the US law of war was clear in its prohibition ofassassination:
- 11 Id.
- 12 Ward Thomas, Norms and Security: The Case of International Assassination, 25 Int'l Security 105 (2000),
13 Emmerich de Vattel, Le droit des gens, p. 289 (1758), quoted in Ward, op. cit. supra.
14 Stephen F. Knott, Secret and Sanctioned: Covert Operations and the American Presidency at 171 (New York:Oxford University Press, 1996), quoted in Ward, op. cit. supra.
15 Ward, op cit. supra.
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The prohibition on assassination was also included in the law of war that beganto be codi ed in the late 1800s . . . Among the most in uential was the U.S. Army'sLieber Code of 1863, which echoed the prevailing view when it stated: "Civilizednations look with horror upon offers or rewards for the assassination of enemies asrelapses into barbarism."16
It is often the exception that proves the rule just as horror at the My Lai massacre underlined thelegal and moral objections to genocide, so (when it came to light) the highly secretive Phoenixprogram illustrated the folly as well as the immorality of a military kill list. Certainly the Phoenixprogram did not achieve its goals; it further provoked Vietnamese opposition, and the US lost thewar.
Indeed, the secretive instances of assassinations by the CIA in Africa and South America led to thespeci c prohibition against assassination. In November 1975, the Senate Select Committee to studyGovernmental Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities issued an interim report on allegedassassination attempts in which it found that the United States Government was implicated in veassassinations or attempted assassinations against foreign government leaders since 1960:17
"It is sometimes asserted, for example, that the United States is exceptionallyaverse to assassination because it does not conform to American values of justiceand fairness. This was the position taken in 1976 by the Church Committee, whichinvestigated the involvement of the CIA in assassination plots. The committeefound fault with assassination because it violates moral precepts fundamental toour way of life . .. [and] traditional American notions of fair play.'"18
Whether it has anything to do with "fair play" or not, there are many historical reasons whyassassinations often create consequences adverse to the assassin's goals. Certainly, the CIA effortsto assassinate Fidel Castro helped to cement his domestic popularity and would have justi ed anumber of illiberal security policies. One result of the Church Committee was Executive Order11905, signed by President Ford on February 18, 1976, which [COLOR=rgb(11.000000%, 11.000000%, 11.000000%)]offered an of cial ban on political[/COLOR][COLOR=rgb(11.000000%, 11.000000%, 11.000000%)]assassination:[/COLOR]
"[COLOR=rgb(11.000000%, 11.000000%, 11.000000%)]No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire toengage in, political assassination."[/COLOR]
In reaf rming and extending President Ford's order, President Carter removed the limitation topolitical acts. President Carter's Executive Order 12036 in 1978 provided:
"No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall
engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination."19
In this way, all assassination was banned. The same wording was used by President Reagan in
- 16 Zengel, Assassination and the Law of Armed Con ict, p. 622, quoted in Ward, op cit. supra.
- 17 See U.S. S. REP. No. 465, 94th Cong., 1st Sess. (1975).
- 18 Ward, op cit. supra.
- 19 See Carter Executive Order No. 12036, Ex. Ord. No. 12036, Jan. 24, 1978, 43 F.R. 3674, as amended by Ex.
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Executive order 12333 on December 4, 1981, and this language is in force today.20
The recent history of Britain's approach to assassination is similar to the US. Even in World War2, the UK was involved in just one direct assassination that of Reinhard Heydrich - and theconsensus is that his death "wasn't worth the countless victims that Nazi terror produced over thefollowing weeks":
[COLOR=rgb(19.200000%, 19.200000%, 19.200000%)]Nazi reprisals were savage. In the village of Lidice, thought to be linked to theassassins, 173 men over the age of 16 were killed, every woman was sent to aconcentration camp, every child dispersed, every building levelled.[/COLOR]
Furthermore, however bad Heydrich had been, his successor turned out to be even more savage.21
Thus, while it is sometimes said that terrorism blurs the line between war and peace, law andpractice have evolved to the point where it is illegal to target individuals on a kill-only list even inwar.22 The UK was accused of such a policy in dealing with the IRA, and the policy in operation atthe time was found to have been illegal.23
Regardless, in the case of the JPEL Kill List, the pretext of terrorism cannot be used to target thosewho are better de ned as simple criminals, such as drug traf ckers.
Most worryingly, perhaps, because of the politically expedient de nition of terrorism, nations thatdo not adhere closely to the rule of law may rather rapidly stretch the most de ned "Kill List" totheir own purposes:
[COLOR=rgb(19.200000%, 19.200000%, 19.200000%)]If America can legitimately kill its citizens in Yemen, why can't Russia do the samein London? A few wonder if it already has, pointing to the poisoning of AlexanderLitvinenko.[/COLOR][COLOR=rgb(19.200000%, 19.200000%, 19.200000%)]24[/COLOR]
And, waiting in the wings, many other countries would like to have their own Kill Lists.
III. THE FIRST 21ST CENTURY UK KILL LIST: JPEL IN AFGHANISTAN ANDPAKISTAN
It transpires that, long before the Prime Minister told parliament of a "new departure" in Britishpolicy involving the killing of Reyaad Khan in Syria, the UK had been deeply involved in developingand executing a Kill List in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a list that remains active.
A. A Brief Introduction To The JPEL List
The iteration of the Joint Prioritized Effects List (JPEL),25 part of the Edward Snowden les, is from
20 See Reagan [COLOR=rgb(14.100000%, 14.100000%, 13.700000%)]Executive Order 12333--United States intelligence activities Source: The provisions of ExecutiveOrder 12333 of Dec. 4, 1981, appear at 46 FR 59941, 3 CFR, 1981 Comp., p. 200: "2.11Prohibition on Assassination.No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in,assassination." [/COLOR][COLOR=rgb(14.100000%, 14.100000%, 13.700000%)]http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codi cation/executive-order/12333.html[/COLOR][COLOR=rgb(14.100000%, 14.100000%, 13.700000%)].[/COLOR]
21 Gordon Corera, BBC Security Correspondent, [COLOR=rgb(9.000000%, 9.000000%, 9.000000%)]Licence to kill: When governments choose to assassinate[/COLOR][COLOR=rgb(9.000000%, 9.000000%, 9.000000%)](March 17, 2012), at [/COLOR]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17353379.
22 Geneva Conventions Protocol I, §40 ("It is prohibited to order that there shall be no survivors, to threaten anadversary therewith or to conduct hostilities on this basis").
23 McCann v. United Kingdom, 21 ECHR 97 GC (1995).
24 Corera, [COLOR=rgb(9.000000%, 9.000000%, 9.000000%)]Licence to kill, supra[/COLOR].
25 [COLOR=rgb(0.000000%, 0.000000%, 100.000000%)]http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35508.pdf[/COLOR]
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BRITAIN'S KILL LIST
August 2010, and includes 669 targets. Since the list has been in effect since 2002, and is updatedmonthly, it is fair to assume that in its entirety, thousands of individuals have been included on theJPEL Kill List at one time or another.
The JPEL list is still in use today. In September 2015, the New York Times ran an investigationalleging that two European countries Germany and Sweden were "directly participating in so-called kill decisions against insurgents in Afghanistan despite rules prohibiting them from doingso."26 One of cial said: "They were sitting around there giving thumbs up or down, like gladiatorsin a stadium." Sadly, we now know that this is what has been happening for 14 years, and Britishthumbs have frequently been turned down, for death.
The list very clearly shows that its targets are not limited only to those in Afghanistan, but that theyalso include Pakistani targets in Pakistan. Equally important, these Pakistani targets were eitherplaced on the list by the UK (i.e. the Target nominating force) or the UK is the force tasked as leadagency in their targeting, or both.
The JPEL divided people into those who should be used for intelligence, those who should becaptured, those who may be either captured or killed, and those who should only be killed.27 The"Kill Only" tag is further corroborated by "a top [US] military expert":
"the Pentagon has created elaborate formulas to help the military make suchlethal calculations. A top military expert, who declined to be named, spoke of themilitary's system, saying, "There's a whole taxonomy of targets." Some people areapproved for killing on sight."28
The US has always claimed that lists such as JPEL only target the worst of the worst', the socalledHigh-Value Targets (HVTs).29 The JPEL list, however, proves otherwise; rather, the US, the UK andother allies were also going after mid- and low-level members of the Taliban on a large scale, such alarge scale that the list at any time included hundreds of people. Furthermore, amongst those on thelist are alleged drug dealers and paedophiles, included on the pretext that they are associated withthe insurgents.30 (Much more about them below.)
B. How The JPEL Kill List Operates
There are a number of issues that arise from an analysis of the JPEL list involving how people are
listed to be killed, and the unreliable intelligence that forms the basis for any designation.1. JPEL Restrictions To Kill Or Not to Kill?
There are various options on the JPEL menus. Indeed, it is described as a "whole taxonomy oftargets".31 Of the 669, some 127 are subject only to monitoring or intelligence collection.32 Beyond
- 26 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/05/world/....html?_r=0
- 27 The document shows the former three categories but does not re ect the latter, which was revealed in a
28 Jane Mayer, The Predator War, The New Yorker (Oct. 26, 2009), at http://www.newyorker.com/maga-zine/2009/...edator-war (emphasis supplied).
29 US Military Joint Publication 3-60 (31 Jan. 2013), 2015_06_23_PUB Joint Targeting.pdf, at I-9.
30 http://www.spiegel.de/international/worl...10358.html.
31 Id.
32 These are JPEL ##96, 264, 316, 376, 377, 378, 379, 522-533, 535-542, 544-559, 561, 563-571, 573-575,
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BRITAIN'S KILL LIST
this, there are 31 people who are subject to capture only, not killing.33 Among these, just two (JPEL217, 623) are subject only to "non lethal action capture only" in other words, lives may be takenin capturing the others. Some are "kill only" a patent violation of International Humanitarian Law(IHL) and International Human Rights Law (IHRL).
Certain JPEL targets were to be kept secret from the Afghans, presumably because of corruptionwithin the authorities.34 However, if people were captured and turned over to the Afghan authorities,there was every chance that they would be tortured.35
Of the 669 targets, 657 were subject to a 90-day rule. In other words, the "authorization" for"executing" whatever the directions are for the individual remained good for 90 days. However,12 are exempt from the 90-day rule altogether.36 With these, the tautological "imminence" of thedanger they pose if killed is extended inde nitely.
[FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT]1
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Carl Jung - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14