{"id":16775,"date":"2012-10-26T18:08:51","date_gmt":"2012-10-26T17:08:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=16775"},"modified":"2012-10-26T18:52:12","modified_gmt":"2012-10-26T17:52:12","slug":"un-to-investigate-us-drone-war-crimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/war-terrorism\/un-to-investigate-us-drone-war-crimes\/","title":{"rendered":"Killer drones: UN to investigate US war crimes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mick Meaney<\/a>, rinf.com |<\/p>\n

The United Nations claims it will probe the legality of American killer drones in\u00a0Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia.<\/p>\n

A UN special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, Ben Emmerson, told a Harvard Law School audience he would create a special investigative unit\u00a0in Geneva\u00a0to examine the legality of U.S. drone attacks.<\/p>\n

In his speech Emmerson said:<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the relevant states are not willing to establish effective independent monitoring mechanisms\u2026 then it may in the last resort be necessary for the UN to act.<\/p>\n

“Together with my colleague Christof Heyns, [the UN special rapporteur on extra-judicial killings], I will be launching an investigation unit within the special procedures of the [UN] Human Rights Council to inquire into individual drone attacks.<\/p>\n

“Other forms of targeted killing\u2026 in which it is alleged that civilian casualties have been inflicted.<\/p>\n

“The global war paradigm has done immense damage to a previously shared international consensus on the legal framework underlying both international human rights law and international humanitarian law.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has also given a spurious justification to a range of serious human rights and humanitarian law violations.<\/p>\n

“The [global] war paradigm was always based on the flimsiest of reasoning, and was not supported even by close allies of the US. The first-term Obama administration initially retreated from this approach, but over the past 18 months it has begun to rear its head once again, in briefings by administration officials seeking to provide a legal justification for the drone program of targeted killing in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.<\/p>\n

“[It is] alleged that since President Obama took office at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims and more than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. Christof Heyns \u2026 has described such attacks, if they prove to have happened, as war crimes. I would endorse that view.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The unit will be created early next year.<\/p>\n

So far, President Obama has issued\u00a0almost 300 strikes in\u00a0Pakistan, bringing the total number of strikes to 350, since 2004.<\/p>\n

The \u00a0<\/strong>Bureau of Investigative Journalism<\/a>\u00a0reports that at 474 \u2014 885 civilians, including\u00a0176 children have been killed\u00a0as a result, injuring a total of\u00a01,248-1,397 people.<\/p>\n

Of the 41-51 strikes in\u00a0Yemen since 2002, 60-163 civilian have been killed, including 24-34 children.<\/p>\n

Somalia which has been under attack since 2007 is the least effected, with 10-23 strikes killing 11-57 civilians and 1-3 children.<\/p>\n

But let’s face it. For the United States to kill just 1 innocent civilian, is 1 too many.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mick Meaney, rinf.com | The United Nations claims it will probe the legality of American killer drones in\u00a0Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia. A UN special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, Ben Emmerson, told a Harvard Law School audience he would create a special investigative unit\u00a0in Geneva\u00a0to examine the legality of U.S. drone attacks. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16775","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-latest-news","7":"category-war-terrorism"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16775\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}