US intends least transparency in drone assassination program: Lawyer Fri May 2, 2014 5:23PM GMT An interview with Alfred Lambremont Webre WATCH INTERVIEW (VIDEO) presstv.ir/detail/2014/05/02/361013/us-drone-strikes-have-no-transparency/ Killer drones and Obama’s invisible war Press TV has conducted an interview with Alfred Lambremont Webre, war crimes lawyer from Vancouver, to discuss the issue of US assassination drone strikes. What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview. Press TV: I want to look at this issue of drones as a whole from the outside. What is it that the international community is not doing at this point or should be doing to try to control the situation of innocents or people who have not at least being judged being killed by these US assassination drones? Webre: Well I think that the international community has to become much more aggressive because just yesterday Senator Dianne Feinstein of California at the behest of James Clapper who is the director of National Intelligence of the United States, she took out the provision in the bill authorizing intelligence operations for fiscal 2014 that would have required the President of United States to issue an annual public report clarifying the number of combatants and non-combatants, civilians killed or injured by drone strikes during the previous years. And that would have begun to issue the measure of accountability and transparency that the United Nations now in its latest reporting through UN Special Rapporteur Ben Emmerson has required which is a 22 page document examining drone incidents in Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan and Gaza and concluding that these may violate international law because there is no accountability and there is no transparency. So even the legal measures requiring an annual report that was in the bill up until yesterday in the US Senate was taken out yesterday by Senator Dianne Feinstein at the behest of the director of National Intelligence, James Clapper. So that shows that the United States has the least intention of giving any transparency as to its drone assassination program. We do have some numbers that are coming from an NGO. There have been at least 397 drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia during Obama’s two terms. They have killed at least 2,183 people, at least 279 civilians according to the bureau’s estimates based on open source investigations. So the bipartisan bill that was co-sponsored by California Democrat Adam Schiff and North Carolina Republican Walter Jones has been crippled by Dianne Feinstein at the behest of the Director of National Intelligence. This does not say much for what the intentions of the Obama administration are for the national security apparatus. The United States is going forward again as an outlaw nation to continue its program of international assassination without accountability in my legal opinion. AHK/AB
Posted on: Sat, 03 May 2014 20:41:10 +0000
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