High Value Target HVT / Political Assassination

[jmm99]

I have to take issue with a collateral point asserted by Wilf in his "targeted killings" article in the Infinity Journal (linked by David above).

Wilf's assertion:

p.13 pdf

For example, it can be shown that it is a mistake to refer to a “policy of targeted killings”, as policy refers to ultimate political objectives, not a particular tactic (e.g. killing).

That assertion is not borne out when one looks at state practice and the terminology used by policy types, where "targeted killings" (or forbidding them) are expressly considered a matter of national policy. Here are examples from Israel, Russia and the US.

As Israeli Policy - Evidence

First, look to the title of the 2005 Zussman article (one of Wilf's footnotes) - Targeted Killings: Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Counterterrorism Policy, by Asaf Zussman & Noam Zussman, Discussion Paper No. 2005.02, January 2005. The "policy" terminology is used more than a dozen times in the article's body.

And second, look to a more definitive source - the Israeli Supreme court, quoting the Israeli government - in the 2005 Targeted Killings Case:

HCJ 769/02: The Public Committee against Torture in Israel & Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment v. The Government of Israel, The Prime Minister of Israel, The Minister of Defense, The Israel Defense Forces, The Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces & Shurat HaDin – Israel Law Center and 24 others; The Supreme Court Sitting as the High Court of Justice [December 11 2005]
......
2. In its war against terrorism, the State of Israel employs various means. As part of the security activity intended to confront the terrorist attacks, the State employs what it calls "the policy of targeted frustration" of terrorism. Under this policy, the security forces act in order to kill members of terrorist organizations involved in the planning, launching, or execution of terrorist attacks against Israel. During the second intifada, such preventative strikes have been performed across Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip. According to the data relayed by petitioners, since the commencement of these acts, and up until the end of 2005, close to three hundred members of terrorist organizations have been killed by them. More than thirty targeted killing attempts have failed. Approximately one hundred and fifty civilians who were proximate to the location of the targeted persons have been killed during those acts. Hundreds of others have been wounded. The policy of targeted killings is the focus of this petition.

The body has over 40 references to that "policy".

As Russian Policy - Evidence

2007 Turbiville, Hunting Leadership Targets (JSOU).pdf (p.14-15 pdf):

Shamil Basayev - the most notorious, effective, and hunted Chechen insurgent and terrorist leader in the Caucasus - died in a large roadside explosion in Igushetia, a 10 July 2006 event that Russia quickly claimed as a “special operations” success.[1] The last public communiqué that Basayev is known to have written appeared just the day before he died. It was issued to express his Caucasus jihadists’ gratitude to Iraqi mujahideen for their elimination of five “Russian diplomats” and “spies” ambushed in Baghdad on 3 June 2006. Basayev noted that the deaths were fitting revenge for the February 2004 assassination of former Chechen President, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, by Russian Foreign Security Service agents in Doha, Qatar. [2] A likely contributing factor was the Chechen earnest request to the Arab/Iraqi guerrillas for this action. Further illustration of common Chechen-Iraqi insurgent interests were Iraqi militant demands that Russia withdraw from Chechnya.[3]

(footnotes 1-3 omitted)

One of the Russian diplomats in Iraq was killed on the spot, with the other four kidnapped and executed later that month by the Iraqi “Mujahideen Shura Council.” [4] The Shura Council, which videotaped the event, purports to be an umbrella organization for a number of guerrilla groups-for example, “Al Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers (Iraq).” At the time, Al Qaeda was led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the priority terrorist target of U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF). Being Iraq’s most prominent and murderous insurgent, he was killed in a U.S. operation on 8 June, just days after the Russians were kidnapped.[5]

(footnotes 4-5 omitted)

Russian President Vladimir Putin reacted with seeming decisiveness to the murder of the diplomats in Iraq.[6] He requested and received the authority - “unanimously, unconditionally, and limitlessly” - from the Russian Parliament to deploy military and security service/special operations personnel abroad to identify and hunt down terrorists who harmed Russian citizens and to attack their bases.[7] He specifically ordered the personnel “to find and eliminate the terrorists” responsible for the abduction and murders.[8] Not long thereafter on 20 July, Putin appeared on Russian television to personally decorate the unseen (by cameras) and unnamed Russian special operators credited with Basayev’s elimination.[9]

6. Putin chose to publicly announce his intentions to seek out the militants involved - and call for help in identifying the murders - at a 28 June 2006 meeting with the Saudi Foreign Minister in Moscow. See Francesca Mereu and Simon Saradzhyan, “Putin.”

7. See three references:

a. “Russia to Fight Terror Worldwide,” 5 July 2006, available from http://kommersant.com/page.asp?id=687758 (accessed May 2007)

b. “Troops Abroad,” 8 July 2006, available from http://kommersant.com/page.asp?id=688676 (accessed May 2007)

c. Ivan Preobrazhenskiy: “President’s Military Right,” Politkom.ru, 8 July 2006, translated in CEP20060711035001.

8. Putin’s intentions were called “absolutely moral and legal from a logical point of view,” by the First Deputy Speaker of the State Duma, Oleg Morozov, and widely reported in the Russian media. For example, see ITAR-TASS, 4 July 2006, translated in CEP20060704950089.

9. The 20 July 2006 award ceremony was noted in various media, including Tatyana Aleksandrova and Mikhail Antonov, presenters, “Vesti,” Rossiya TV, 20 July 2006, translated in CEP20060720950276.

The bottom line here was the Russian government's expression of its "targeted killings" policy via the Duma's act and Putin's executive order.

As US Policy - Evidence

US express national policy forbids "assassination" (EO 12333), but there are exceptions summarized in this famous (to JAG types), MEMORANDUM ON EXECUTIVE ORDER 12333 AND ASSASSINATION, Colonel W. Hays Parks, USMCR (Ret.) (attached as pdf):

In a Memorandum of Law originally dated November 2, 1989, W. Hays Parks, Special Assistant for Law of War Matters to The Judge Advocate General of the Army, examined national and international legal interpretations of assassination in order to provide guidance in revising a U.S. Army Law of War Manual. The memo is not a statement of policy, but rather a discussion of the definition of assassination and legal issues to consider in its application, including levels of conflict and the distinction between assassination in wartime and peacetime. It explores the meaning and possible application of assassination - which is prohibited as a matter of national policy by Executive Order 12333 - in conventional, counterinsurgency, and counter-terrorist operations. The memo concludes that the use of military force against legitimate targets that threaten U.S. citizens or national security as determined by the President does not constitute assassination and would therefore not be prohibited by Executive Order 12333 or by international law.

The memo was promulgated in 1989 and is reproduced here to enhance the discussion, still relevant 14 years later, about the legal implications of a policy of targeted killings.

Exceptions to EO 12333 require Presidential findings, etc. (a "policy statement" by any definition I know).

Note that deadly force, as used in the various contexts allowed under COL Parks' arguments, goes well beyond the US domestic law limits (for LEOs) established in Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985), and Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989).

A generalized reason for requiring express adoption of "targeted killings" as a national policy is that the military is not usually authorized constitutionally to act in these gray areas without express authority from the political branches. Even Putin found it necessary to pick up cover from the Duma.

Wilf, I can't see why a military type would reject an express national policy cover. As a civvy type, I would surely want an express EO as an exception to EO 12333 before sending out the drones to kill someone. Enlighten me.

Regards

Mike