Maria Miller

Editor-in-Chief

“The detention of American citizens, without access to counsel, fair procedure, or pursuant to judicial authorization, as enemy combatants is unconstitutional.” - President Barack Obama (Interview with The Boston Globe, December 2007)

    On September 30, 2011, two American-born terrorists, Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, were killed in Yemen by a drone attack led by U.S. counterterrorism forces.  al-Awlaki and Khan were involved with Al-Qaeda propaganda, and the terroristic society will suffer greatly from the loss of al-Awlaki.  The disturbing fact about the men’s deaths?  They didn’t get a trial before their execution.

    Habeas corpus states that American citizens cannot be punished, jailed, killed, etc. without due process of law.  But this changed in January 2010. The Obama administration now has the right to assassinate American citizens who the government believes to be terrorists, with no trial, inside or outside the United States.  Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, stated before the House Intelligence Committee:  "We take direct actions against terrorists in the intelligence community; if we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that.”  

    This testimony was an extension of the Military Commissions Act of 2009, which stated that in the event a terrorist is not found guilty by due process, the government administration may choose to jail them anyway.  This is justifiable by the President’s “post-acquittal detention powers.”  The law also allows the government to detain or kill any terrorist without trial.  But until this recent extension, American citizens did not qualify.

    A small number of men like al-Awlaki were put on the Obama administration’s assassination list, because the government assumes they are involved in terroristic activities.  However, al-Awlaki marks the first American citizen to be killed by the government without trial (Foreign terrorists had been killed before this - Osama Bin Ladin, for example).  Samir Khan, the other American killed by the drone attack, was not even on this list, but was also killed with no trial.  The Obama administration attempted to press charges against the two men before the assassinations, but could not find sufficient evidence against the men.  The military carried out the attack at the behest of the Obama administration with no judicial support. 

    The two men’s assassinations are the most recent in a series of drone attacks on the people on the assassination list.  The government has been detaining and torturing terrorists and prisoners-of-war for years, most famously in the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, with no trial or charges pressed against them.  But it is only recently that America’s own citizens have been the target.