From AL JAZEERA:
“…the attorney general outlined a three-part test for determining when a targeted killing against a U.S. citizen is legal. He said the government must determine after careful review that the citizen poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the U.S., capture is not feasible and the killing would be consistent with laws of war…
[Anwar] Al-Awlaki’s father sued to try to stop the government from killing his son, arguing he had to be afforded the constitutional right to due process. But U.S. District Judge John Bates in Washington refused to intervene in al-Awlaki’s case because he said the courts do not have the authority to review the president’s military decisions…
Few things are as dangerous to American liberty as the proposition that the government should be able to kill citizens anywhere in the world on the basis of legal standards and evidence that are never submitted to a court, either before or after the fact,”[Hina Shamsi with the American Civil Liberties Union] said. “Anyone willing to trust President Obama with the power to secretly declare an American citizen an enemy of the state and order his extrajudicial killing should ask whether they would be willing to trust the next president with that dangerous power.”
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