U.N. report slams drone usage

GENEVA – The escalating campaign of CIA drone strikes against suspected militants in Pakistan has made the United States “the most prolific user of targeted killings” in the world today, according to a U.N. official who said the spy agency should not be in charge of the program.

Philip Alston, a New York University law professor and the United Nations’ special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, made the comments Wednesday as he released a report on targeted killings that criticized the U.S. for asserting “an ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe” as part of its fight against al-Qaida and other militant groups.

The findings, which Alston is scheduled to present today to the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva, form one of the most critical assessments to date of U.S. drone strikes, a tactic that has been stepped up significantly under the Obama administration and that U.S. officials have credited with inflicting severe blows against al-Qaida and other militant groups.

On Monday, U.S. officials revealed that a recent U.S. attack was believed to have killed al-Qaida’s No. 3 leader, Sheik Said Masri, who had been in hiding in Pakistan since 2001.

As the drone attacks have expanded, they have attracted increasing criticism from human rights organizations and international legal scholars, some of whom claim aspects of the program violate international law and risk generating a backlash in Pakistan and other countries where the strikes are carried out.

Although the U.S. does not officially acknowledge the CIA drone strikes, much of the report was dismissed by Obama administration officials.

“We have a way to get at dangerous terrorists operating in areas otherwise inaccessible to the central government or to conventional military units. It’s effective, exact and essential,” said a U.S. counterterrorism official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

In a statement, CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said: “Without discussing or confirming any specific action, this agency’s operations are, of course, designed to be lawful and are subject to close oversight within our government.”

Alston’s report discusses targeted killings by several countries, including Russia, Israel and Sri Lanka. But he focused on the U.S. use of drones, arguing that other governments are likely to copy the tactic in coming years.

Many other countries are seeking to acquire unmanned aircraft of their own, the report said, because the aircraft “permit targeted killing at little or no risk” and can be operated by pilots thousands of miles away.

“This strongly asserted but ill-defined license to kill without accountability is not an entitlement which the United States or other states can have without doing grave damage to the rules designed to protect the right to life and prevent extrajudicial executions,” Alston said.

He said the more widespread use of drone attacks could undermine international human rights rules that have been interpreted to govern the use of lethal force.

Current and former U.S. officials familiar with the program took issue with Alston’s findings, including the assertion that the White House is claiming “an ever-expanding” right to conduct drone strikes anywhere in the world. In fact, two officials said, the Obama administration has limited who can be targeted in drone strikes outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan to members of al-Qaida and allied terror groups – a tighter standard than existed during the Bush administration.

Under Obama, the number of airstrikes in Pakistan have expanded to an average of more than two a week, in part because the CIA was given authority in 2008 to carry out strikes against individuals deemed to be a threat to the U.S., even when the U.S. does not know their names or has only fragmentary information about their intentions.

Alston said that the secrecy surrounding the program makes it impossible to assess whether the CIA is taking adequate steps to prevent the killing of civilians, either because they happen to be too close when a militant is targeted or because of faulty intelligence about who the target is.

“It is clear that many hundreds of people have been killed, and that this number includes some innocent civilians,” Alston said.

U.S. officials have said that fewer than 50 civilians have been killed in the strikes since 2008.