WASHINGTON – U.S. citizens are legitimate military targets when they take up arms with al-Qaida, top national security lawyers in the Obama administration said Thursday.
The lawyers were asked at a national security conference about the CIA killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen and leading al-Qaida figure. He died in a Sept. 30 U.S. drone strike in the mountains of Yemen.
The government lawyers, CIA counsel Stephen Preston and Pentagon counsel Jeh Johnson, did not directly address the al-Awlaki case. But they said U.S. citizens do not have immunity when they are at war with the United States.
Johnson said only the executive branch, not the courts, is equipped to make military battlefield targeting decisions about who qualifies as an enemy.
The courts in habeas cases, such as those involving whether a detainee should be released from the Guantánamo Bay detention facility in Cuba, make the determination of who can be considered an enemy combatant.
Late last year, a judge threw out a lawsuit filed by al-Awlaki’s father, saying that the courts do not have the authority to review military decisions by the president aimed at protecting the country from terrorists. The cleric’s father, Nasser al-Awlaki of Yemen, was suing to prevent the U.S. from targeting his son.
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