Ben Emmerson QC addresses reporters in London (Photo: TBIJ)
A UN investigation into the legality and casualties of drone strikes has been formally launched, with a leading human rights lawyer revealing the team that will carry out the inquiry.
The announcement came as the latest reported US drone strike in Yemen was said to have mistakenly killed two children.
Ben Emmerson QC, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, told a London press conference that he will lead a group of international specialists who will examine CIA and Pentagon covert drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
The team will also look at drone strikes by US and UK forces in Afghanistan, and by Israel in the Occupied Territories. In total some 25 strikes are expected to be examined in detail.
The senior British barrister will work alongside international criminal lawyers, a senior Pakistani judge and one of the UK’s leading forensic pathologists, as well as experts from Pakistan and Yemen. Also joining the team is a serving judge-advocate with the US military ‘who is assisting the inquiry in his personal capacity.’
Emmerson told reporters: ’Those states using this technology and those on whose territory it is used are under an international law obligation to establish effective independent and impartial investigations into any drone attack in which it is plausibly alleged that civilian casualties were sustained.’
But in the absence of such investigations by the US and others, the UN would carry out investigations ‘in the final resort’, he said.
Related story - UN team to investigate civilian drone deaths
Early signs indicate Emmerson’s team may have assistance from relevant states. He told journalists that Britain’s Ministry of Defence was already co-operating, and that Susan Rice, the US’s ambassador to the United Nations, had indicated that Washington ‘has not ruled out full co-operation.’
Those states using this technology and those on whose territory it is used are under an international law obligation to establish effective independent and impartial investigations into any drone attack in which it is plausibly alleged that civilian casualties were sustained.’
Ben Emmerson QC
The UN Human Rights Council last year asked its special rapporteurs to begin an investigation after a group of nations including Russia, China and Pakistan requested action on covert drone strikes. Emmerson told the Bureau: ‘It’s a response to the fact that there’s international concern rising exponentially, surrounding the issue of remote targeted killings through the use of unmanned vehicles.’
Related story - Obama terror drones: CIA tactics in Pakistan include targeting rescuers and funerals
Emmerson said he expects to make recommendations to the UN general assembly by this autumn. His team will also call for further UN action ‘if that proves to be justified by the findings of my inquiry’.
He added: ‘This is not of course a substitute for effective official independent investigations by the states concerned.’
One area the inquiry is expected to examine is the deliberate targeting of rescuers and funeral-goers by the CIA in Pakistan, as revealed in an investigation by the Bureau for the Sunday Times.
In October 2012 Emmerson said: ‘The Bureau has 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 [UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killing] … has described such attacks, if they prove to have happened, as war crimes. I would endorse that view.’
The American Civil Liberties Union welcomed the UN inquiry, and called on the US to aid investigators. ‘Whether it does or not will show whether it holds itself to the same obligation to co-operate with UN human rights investigations that it urges on other countries,” said Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU’s Human Rights Programme.
Who’s who on the UN’s team
Dr Nat Cary – One of the UK’s most respected forensic pathologists, Cary is the president of the British Association of Forensic Medicine and has worked on high-profile cases including the second autopsy of Ian Tomlinson and that of Joanna Yeates. He is an expert in injuries caused by explosions.
Imtiaz Gul – Gul is an eminent observer of terrorism and security in Pakistan. The executive director of the Islamabad-based Center for Research and Security Studies, which tracks terrorist activity and violence throughout Pakistan, he is also a prominent journalist. He has written four books on al Qaeda, the Taliban and Pakistan’s militants, and is a regular contributor to both Pakistani and international titles.
Abdul-Ghani Al-Iryani - A long-established analyst of and commentator on Yemeni politics, Iryani also leads the Democratic Awakening Movement. This campaign group, formed as President Saleh’s regime weakened during the Arab Spring, campaigns for human rights, strong civil society and the rule of law in Yemen.
Professor Sarah Knuckey – Human rights lawyer Knuckey runs the Global Justice Clinic at New York University’s law school. Last year she co-authored a major study into the impact of drones on civilians, Living Under Drones, which found that the CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan had a ‘damaging and counterproductive’ effect on those who lived within the strike zone.
Lord Macdonald QC – A former director of public prosecutions for the UK government, Liberal Democrat peer Ken Macdonald is a leading defence barrister at Matrix Chambers, where Emmerson also practices. He has authored a major review of governmental counter-terrorism policy. He is chair of legal charity Reprieve’s board of trustees.
Sir Geoffrey Nice QC – A war crimes specialist, Nice spent eight years as a prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, culminating in leading the team that prosecuted Slobodan Milosevic. Many of his cases still centre on international law and war crimes – and last year he caused controversy by questioning whether Sudan’s President Bashir was responsible for genocide in Darfur.
Captain Jason Wright – The US Army lawyer who defended Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in his trial for plotting the September 11 attacks, Wright spoke out about his client’s torture in Guantanamo Bay. He is now a judge-advocate with the US military and is assisting the inquiry in a personal capacity, Emmerson noted at the investigation’s launch.
Justice Shah Jehan Khan Yousafzai - Yousafzai has spent two decades as senior judge in the circuit of Peshawar high court, working in towns and cities adjacent to the Pakistani tribal regions that have been the epicentre of covert drone warfare. Peshawar high court has heard high-profile legal challenges to the drone campaign.
Jasmine Zerini – A former diplomat, Zerini is a specialist in Pakistan and Afghanistan, having worked as deputy director for South Asia for the French foreign ministry.
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January 24th, 2013 at 11:51 pm (#)
IF the result of this investigation is not something which can be summed up in a quote in a bold header on an Op Ed or in 3 simple paragraphs which the average adult reader can understand without being a lawyer then there will be no resulting affect on anything. Public opinion, trending memes is what speaks to power… not just truth. When you create the game arbitrarily i.e. The G.W.O.T. you can bend the rules and control the logic… It’s a fabulous device you have to admit it. Oh and remember what happened the last time a S.R. for the UN spoke too loudly about drones and targeted killings?
This game is long term and bigger than all of you. The interests at play here are varied and complex and all of them committed in their own little way to defending future drone use. Between the companies who build them (GA, Lockeed etc), the Congressmen from the states who benefit, the FAA lobbying/pandering, the war-weary US public, the defense orientated red meat republican base who hear ‘patriotism’ when they hear ‘drones and terrorists’ it’s a big mt of crap and another report is not going to change anything. You’re late to the party and you’re outgunned and out-marketed… but it needs to be done because a hand full of you people are passionate about it? or because you want to change something?
Signature strikes will be reduced. Micah Zenko and those who shouted before him have almost guaranteed that fact. Nobody will ever pay for the crimes done to innocent Pakistani’s. But unlike the Phoenix program this will not go away like a bad smell or bad idea – the air force quad review has already guaranteed drones are the future as you all know well…. replacing a couple of fighter wings every year going forward and with the next gen X-47b and the British counterparts rolling out in the next 4 years this train has left the station. Money has been committed and the public doesn’t care about drones… or what they do…. or where they do it. THAT IS THE CENTRAL POINT TO ALL OF THIS – IF YOU DON’T GET THAT YOU WON’T MAKE A DIFFERENCE!
Self-defense will remain the unreasonable reason given by the US. You will need to shout very very loud in all the right ways and morally and emotionally challenge the right demographic with the findings of your report to have any REAL influence. Unless the whole thing is merely perfunctory by a group of guys who are from within the fog of it all too long and can’t see the woods for the trees.
Reports try to find truths – truths need simplifying for the masses and the masses will only care when they can relate – challenge their idea of heroism, of terror, of the importance of legal reasoning and mostly of the anti-productive nature of the whole concept of these 450 drones strikes since 2004 which have blown up between 3000 and 4000 people without due process no matter what legal spells Holder or Koh try to weave! MAKE IT MATTER. In reality there are files somewhere deep in Langley in some box which shows drone war crimes and there is an entire web of cross agency people from JSOC to SOCOM to USAF to Creech to Langley to the Exec branch to Justice to Advisers to Obama and Bush form the bottom to the very top all intermingled with evidence of torture and a bureaucratized sub quality network of Intel right form Iran to Pakistan with so many conflicts of interest from GPS beacons being handed out willy nilly to give politician short term strikes in number, an out of control leashless drone army with a very narrow decision tree all at the whim of a small number of pro-drone Al Qaeda killer idealists who think that hate can be squashed with a boot and try ever so hard to realize this mistaken policy in everything they do.
Too many people stand to lose too much and the most dangerous between them all are those who stand to shown to be wrong – that their idealist view of dealing with so called ‘terror’ is wrong – their whole world view. These are the guys who will use the whole weight of the admin and everything and everyone and every technique at their disposal to neutralize any efforts you make no matter what truths you think you find. There was never any arguing with the ‘Paul Wolfowitz’s of this world… there never will be – they invest too much in their view and they’re always the smartest guys in the room. Obama is not one of these guys – he has merely taken on the role as SIN EATER… he is a moral man and he knows exactly what is morally wrong with so many of the drone strikes which have been carried out in his name at his command as his purposefully chosen road forward even before he sat in the Oval office chair for the first time. HOMELAND purposefully uses a drone strike narrative and makes no bones about which strike it was referring to ‘ The Chenagai Drone Strike ‘ was very major war crime and somebody may some day whistle blow on that event. If they did it tomorrow it would have a major effect on the status of the drone policy, but they won’t and the evidence may not be anywhere to hold anyone responsible. 80 kids in a madras.
If that can happen and no single investigative journalist takes on the mission of uncovering what happened that day when they unsuccessfully tried for Zawiri then what does that say about you chances for changing anything? Any codified new laws of conflict which specifically cite drone use will be controlled by US influence and do you think that China or Russia want to limit the future use of their drones which they are currently rigorously developing???? Conflicting interests. The only target for your findings should be journalists and appropriate platforms. Find some truth and then present it for the average non-legal reader and more importantly watcher. IQ squared, Dateline, GPS, CNN, BBC in English with pictures please. If Fareed Zakaria (an ultra centrist as you know and one of the brains on policy debate on TV) is not sitting down with one of you guys – Probably Chris Heynes going by his quotes… then this report will make as much impact as a mouses fart. Just some thoughts.
January 28th, 2013 at 1:43 pm (#)
Maybe if the so called civilians moved out vs play with the terrorists every whim, drone strikes will be absolute accurate.
Game Over.
The inner cities do this by default in every city of the world – as the scum moves in – the normal always move North.