When Barack Obama gave the OK to assassinate an American citizen, Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, who was deemed a terrorist without due process, his father, Nasser al-Awlaki, retained the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights to to seek a federal court order restraining the Obama administration from killing his son without due process of law. But guess what, the Treasury Department has a regulation that prohibits any American from “engaging in transactions” with individuals labeled by the Government as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist”, including lawyers. The lawyer would have to seek a special “license” to represent such a client.
Up Date: Rep. Dennis Kucinich has announced that he will introduce a bill in the House to prevent anyone, including the President, from targeting American citizens for assassination.
The bill states that “No one, including the President, may instruct a person acting within the scope of employment with the United States Government or an agent acting on behalf of the United States Government to engage in, or conspire to engage in, the extrajudicial killing of a United States citizen.” It adds: “the authority granted to the President in the Authorization for Use of Military Force… following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, is not limitless.”
The bill would require the president to submit to the Intelligence Committees a report “on the identity of each United States citizen that is on the list of the Joint Special Operations Command or the Central Intelligence Agency as `high value individuals’ or `high value targets’.”
h/t to Jeremy Scahill at The Nation for his excellent article
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