So reads the headline in the Manchester Guardian on Friday.Campaigners seek arrest of former CIA legal chief over Pakistan drone attacks
UK human rights lawyer leads bid to have John Rizzo arrested over claims he approved attacks that killed hundreds of people
This is British Lawyer Clive Stafford Smith stirring up these troubles. The Guardian Calls Mr Stafford Smith a "human rights" lawyer, but then that raises the question of whose human rights he is trying to protect. He has worked on the rights of people detained at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base for being terrorists or for being unprivileged combatants against US forces in Afghanistan. Now he is working on behalf of those who would wage terrorism against the United States and its People, but who apparently object to they themselves being attacked in an asymmetrical fashion via drones.
The Guardian article concludes with this paragraph:
The use of drones has been sharply criticised both by Pakistani officials as well as international investigators including the UN's special rapporteur Philip Alston who demanded in late 2009 that the US demonstrate that it was not simply running a programme with no accountability that is killing innocent people.(Shouldn't there be a comma before who?) First off, if Pakistan really objected to the drone attacks, they could demand that the US not give it some $2 Billion a year. Thus, the protests of Pakistani officials rings hollow. As for Mr Philip Alston, there is the question of who is innocent. If your husband is knowing harboring people engaged in terrorism, and you know they are engaged in terrorism, are you innocent?
Where this is really taking us is that people like former CIA top lawyer John Rizzo may no longer feel free to vacation in Europe (or elsewhere abroad), for fear of being arrested and tried because someone has brought them to the attention of some authority that is hostile to the way the US does business.
One the one hand, this may be the case of a zealous human rights lawyer. On the other hand, it may be the case of a zealous practitioner of Lawfare. Then what do you do?
Regards — Cliff
One wonders if Mr. Alston isn't a misbegotten offspring of one of the haggard Greenham Ladies of the 1980's. As for worrying over being arrested and prosecuted for "crimes against humanity" I would suggest that there is a much greater chance of that in the US than anywhere else on this rock.
ReplyDeleteCliff, did you see the news about us withholding $800 million in military aid from Pakistan? It's conditional (if they allow our SOF trainers back into NWFP, the faucet may come back on)...of course the relationship is way complicated but then again so is the targeting process in Waziristan...way more so, in fact, than the bloke doing the suing probably cares to know!
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