- WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration
has been seeking Israel's counsel on creating a legal justification for
the assassination of terrorism suspects, the Forward has learned. Legal
experts from the United States and Israel have met in recent months to
discuss the issue, and are considering widening the consultation circle
to include representatives of America's closest allies in the war against
terrorism.
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- Israeli sources who are intimately familiar with the
talks said that American representatives were anxious to learn details
of the legal work that Israeli government jurists have done during the
last two years to tackle possible challenges ÷ both domestic and
international ÷ to its policy of "targeted killings" of
terrorist suspects.
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- On Monday, Israel's attorney general's office submitted
a document to Israel's Supreme Court in defense of the "targeted killing"
policy. The document, submitted in response to an appeal by human rights
groups, for the first time provides a comprehensive set of legal arguments
justifying the assassination of terrorism suspects.
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- Last year, Israeli media reported that the American military
and Central Intelligence Agency sought operation expertise from Israel's
military on how to carry out such operations.
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- Unlike Israel, which went public in November 2000 with
its assassinations policy, the Bush administration, like previous administrations,
officially is opposed to such assassinations and does not acknowledge that
it engages in such actions.
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- The administration repeatedly has condemned Israel's
policy of assassinating suspects in the West Bank and Gaza.
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- According to credible press reports quoting American
officials, however, the Bush administration has resorted to such methods
in pursuing terrorism suspects. Last November, a missile reportedly launched
from an unmanned drone over Yemen killed six suspected members of Osama
bin Laden's Al Qaeda network, including Ali Qaed Senyan al-Harthi, whom
the United States has linked to the attack on the warship USS Cole off
Aden in October 2000. Unnamed American officials confirmed to the press
at the time that the CIA carried out the attack.
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- Last week, in his State of the Union address, President
Bush came close to confirming the administration's involvement in such
operations, saying that terrorism suspects who were not caught and brought
to trial have been "otherwise dealt with." All told, the president
said, "more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in
many countries, and many others have met a different fate."
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- It is not clear how many terrorism suspects the United
States has killed in such targeted operations. Israel, in the past two
years, has assassinated more than 80 suspects, according to Western human
rights organizations. Michael Sfard, a Tel Aviv lawyer who submitted an
appeal to Israel's Supreme Court against the policy on behalf of the Public
Committee Against Torture in Israel, said that according to his data, the
number is higher than 100. "That number, of course, does not include
the dozens of innocent bystanders who are regarded 'collateral damage'
by the authorities," Sfard said.
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- In the document submitted Monday to Israel's Supreme
Court in response to the appeal by Sfard and human rights groups and obtained
by the Israeli daily Ma'ariv, the attorney general's office says that "targeting
identified terrorists, who are directly involved in severe terrorism attacks,
as carried out by Israel's security forces, is utterly legal and legitimate."
Since September 2000, according to the document, Israel is conducting "an
armed conflict" in the West Bank and Gaza, which merits actions under
"warfare laws" and not in accordance with "self-defense
laws."
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- Kenneth Roth, executive director of the New York-based
Human Rights Watch, told the Forward that although he has not read the
Israeli government document, he disagrees with its premise. War powers,
which merit such actions, are not to be used where law enforcement is possible,
Roth said. In the case of Israel, which rules over the West Bank and Gaza,
law-enforcement actions are possible, and suspects can be caught and brought
to justice, Roth said.
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- According to official Israeli data, in more than two
years of armed conflict with the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza,
Israeli forces arrested more than 200 terrorism suspects, which shows that
"you can do it if you want to," Sfard said.
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- Roth said that in this sense there is a fundamental difference
between Israel's and America's pursuit of terrorists. "The core of
the issue is when it is appropriate to treat somebody as an enemy-combatant
rather than as a criminal suspect," Roth said. "If you're an
enemy combatant, you can be shot. That's what war is about. So the real
question is when it is appropriate to characterize someone as such."
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- Based on that yardstick, Roth explained, Human Rights
Watch did not object to the killing of al-Harthi in Yemen in November,
because of two main reasons: his alleged association with al-Qaeda made
him an enemy-combatant, and neither the United States nor the Yemeni government
had any effective control in the area where he was found, which did not
allow for a reasonable law-enforcement alternative. Indeed, 18 Yemeni soldiers
were reportedly killed when they previously tried to arrest al-Harthi.
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- http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.02.07/news5.html
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