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UK Documentary Shines Light on “America’s Secret Killers”
US Army on the Afghan Border (img: US Army)
Amid growing concern over the use of drone warfare, the award-winning UK documentary series ‘Dispatches’ has turned its attention the US targeted killing regime. The film, “America’s Secret Killers”, is available online for UK users via the Channel 4 website. Interspersed with embedded reporting, it interviews Taliban leaders, US Army representatives (among them NATO and US Commander David Petraeus), and counter-terrorism experts. The result is a sobering analysis of what one Pentagon adviser calls an ‘industrial scale counter-terrorism killing machine’. Journalist Stephen Grey, who led the exploration, described the films worrying conclusions in a recent article:
According to Petraeus and his advisers, the medicine is starting to work. The Taliban is on the run and getting desperate.
But is the Kill Capture campaign hitting the right targets? And with British and American troops now approaching almost 10 years of fighting in Afghanistan, how much does it really help in winning the war?
When Dispatches examined the case of one killing – a military assassination by airstrike of an alleged senior Taliban leader – we found disturbing evidence that JSOC may have killed completely the wrong man. Read the rest of this entry »
As Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is Charged, the Debate over Military Commissions Continues
Guantanamo Bay (img: Official US Airforce)
Military prosecutors have re-filed terrorism and murder charges against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men. The charges allege that the men were responsible for planning the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. If convicted, all five suspects could face the death penalty. Despite President Obama’s promise to end military trials, the trial will be held as a military commission in Guantanamo Bay.
Attorney General Eric Holder, who was previously working on “a very strong case” for a federal prosecution of KSM, has strongly criticised the decision. In a public statement, Holder upheld the criminal justice system as the appropriate route for terrorist cases. Opponents of a federal trial, he said, “have taken one of the nation’s most tested counter-terrorism tools off the table and tied our hands in a way that could have serious ramifications.”
The row is part of a wider debate over the future of military commissions, which have been widely criticised for their lack of due process and minimal transparency. Begun under the Bush administration, Guantanamo military commissions were judged unlawful by the Supreme Court (Hamdan vs Rumsfeld) before being legitimised through the controversial Military Commissions Act (MCA) in 2006. President Obama, who pledged during his election campaign to end military trials for terrorists, suspended all proceedings in January 2009 through Executive Order 13492, which famously ordered the closure of Guantanamo within one year. Two years later, both pledges have been broken. The MCA has been reformed, but not rejected, and the Obama administration recently lifted the ban on military tribunals. Following this decision, it announced that KSM and the other 9/11 suspects would be among those tried at the naval detention centre.
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