Proceedings of the 10th International Academic Conference, Vienna

(IM)PERMISSIBILITY OF TARGETED KILLINGS IN THE „WAR ON TERROR“

PETRA PERISIC

Abstract:

As a response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the United States have introduced the policy of targeted killings – targeting individual suspect terrorists and killing them, most often using the unmanned drones operated by the CIA. Likewise, Israel has begun with the same practice, responding thus to the ongoing terrorist threats from the surrounding Muslim-populated areas. An introduction of such killings has raised much controversy over their legality, as well as their moral justification. The core problem lies within the specific nature of the so called „war on terror“ – the war in which the other party is not accurately defined, the war which is most probably indefinite, since it is not likely that terrorist activities will, in this form or the other, ever completely vanish, and most importantly, the war in which means of struggle against terrorists are not defined at all. The „war on terror“ differs from the war in a traditional sense. It is thus not clear whether terrorist acts should be regarded as acts of combatants or acts of civilians. This issue arises from the general dilemma of whether terrorism falls within the ambit of criminal law or within the laws of war. The fact is that it is actually somewhere in between those two and that international law currently has no adequate rules to appropriately address the problem of terrorism. Since terrorists are neither combatants, in the sense of Geneva Conventions of 1949, nor are they pure civilians, which are granted protection from attack under international humanitarian law, a new term of „unlawful combatants“ has been coined. Being „combatants“, terrorists are considered to be the legitimate target of the attack, while the „unlawful“ character of such combatant deprives them of enjoying the prisoners of war status. As much as the „unlawful combatant“ status can appropriately serve as a political justification for the commission of targeted killings, it can hardly be considered consonant with the laws of war. On the other hand, preventing a greater evil might speak in favor of applying such a policy. This paper will focus on examining the legality of the targeted killing practice within the contemporary international law.

Keywords: international law, war on terror, targeted killings

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