Assassination by the Government may be for the target,(what an euphemism!),who
– poses a direct threat to Nation directly or indirectly.
– has harmed the Nation through or not through war
– has carried out terror attacks like 9/!11 attack
for Geopolitical Reasons.
and Business interests.
In earlier times , CIA to attempted to have Castro killed; employed the Mafia to arrange a mob hit on Mr. Castro shortly before the Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961. The Mafia turned out not to be a very reliable partner and the hit never materialized, but the C.I.A. was undeterred. The agency later tried to deliver to Mr. Castro a scuba-diving suit laced with poison. Another plot involved getting Mr. Castro to smoke a toxic cigar.
Those listed for assassination then were Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic and, most famously, Fidel Castro of Cuba, who survived no fewer than eight C.I.A. assassination plots.
None of these people posed a direct threat to US.
But Osama happened to be different in that he not only made killing a routine affair with an existent or non-existent religious flavor and carried out these attacks with deadly weapons and in some cases with prior notice.
His activities transcends national borders, thus making him loathsome by most people on earth.
There remains some people who still believe in the causes he espoused, some of them legitimate though the path he undertook is not.
In short the killing by Government-is it justified?
Legally, these acts may be justified with the exception of Osama.
Assassinations for other reasons mentioned are neither Morally Right or legally Correct.
These acts violate the principle of Social morality and infringe national borders.
Bombing of Qadhafi falls under this category.
He has neither harmed citizens nor is he a National threat.
The bombing can not be justified .
The killing of Osama must remain for what it was- killing of an international criminal, who had planned and the potential to kill more-nothing more.
And this must never be quoted as a precedent.
The way to justice is law and not cold-blooded killing; one needs to be very careful that the killing one undertakes in the name of justice remains the very rare exception, and not the rule.
US Explains Legality.
The chorus of official applause from international leaders over the death of Osama bin Laden has failed to silence doubts about the killing’s legality.
Despite widespread backing for the raid, there is a growing demand for the precise legal basis of the US operation to be explained, particularly given the absence of prior debate in the UN security council.
Prof Nick Grief, an international lawyer at Kent University, said the attack had the appearance of an “extrajudicial killing without due process of the law”.
Cautioning that not all the circumstances were known, he added: “It may not have been possible to take him alive … but no one should be outside the protection of the law.” Even after the end of the second world war, Nazi war criminals had been given a “fair trial”…..
The prominent defence lawyer Michael Mansfield QC expressed similar doubts about whether sufficient efforts had been made to capture Bin Laden. “The serious risk is that in the absence of an authoritative narrative of events played out in Abbottabad, vengeance will become synonymised with justice, and that revenge will supplant ‘due process’.
“Assuming the mission was … intended to detain and not to assassinate, it is therefore imperative that a properly documented and verifiable narrative of exactly what happened is made public. Whatever feelings of elation and relief may dominate the airwaves,” he said, “they must not be allowed to submerge core questions about the legality of the exercise, nor to permit vengeance or summary execution to become substitutes for justice.”
The human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC argued that the killing risked undermining the rule of law. “The security council could have set up an ad hoc tribunal in The Hague, with international judges (including Muslim jurists), to provide a fair trial and a reasoned verdict,” he wrote in the Independent. “This would have been the best way of demystifying this man, debunking his cause and de-brainwashing his followers.”
The immediate justification for the killing was that the head of al-Qaidahad long ago declared war on the US and other nations. “In war you are allowed to attack your enemy,” a US embassy spokesman in London said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/03/osama-bin-laden-killing-legality?INTCMP=SRCH
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