Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Jeremy Scahill (34. “Mr. Barack Obama… I Hope That You Reconsider Your Order to Kill… My Son”) #38

34. “Mr. Barack Obama… I Hope That You Reconsider Your Order to Kill… My Son”

WASHINGTON, DC, AND YEMEN, EARLY 2010—In January 2010, the news leaked in the US media that JSOC had officially elevated Anwar Awlaki to the capture or kill category on its list of High Value Targets. The decision to clear a US citizen for potential targeted assassination was made following a review by the National Security Council, which green-lit the proposal to kill Awlaki. “Both the CIA and the JSOC maintain lists of individuals, called ‘High Value Targets’ and ‘High Value Individuals,’ whom they seek to kill or capture,” reported the Washington Post. “The JSOC list includes three Americans, including Aulaqi, whose name was added late last year. As of several months ago, the CIA list included three U.S. citizens, and an intelligence official said that Aulaqi’s name has now been added.”

When the Post story was published on January 26, the CIA was quick to say that it had not cleared Awlaki for assassination. The Post issued a correction stating that “the military’s Joint Special Operations Command maintains a target list that includes several Americans.” The quibble highlighted the benefit for the White House of using JSOC to conduct lethal operations. “I think it’s a very dubious legality, because of the fact that we’re not at war,” Colonel Patrick Lang told me shortly after it was revealed that Awlaki was on a JSOC hit list. “And he’s not a member of an enemy force that is legally at war with the United States. I like law, when it comes to war. Otherwise things get very messy, very fast.” Constitutional law expert Glenn Greenwald observed at the time:

Obviously, if U.S. forces are fighting on an actual battlefield, then they (like everyone else) have the right to kill combatants actively fighting against them, including American citizens. That’s just the essence of war. That’s why it’s permissible to kill a combatant engaged on a real battlefield in a war zone but not, say, torture them once they’re captured and helplessly detained. But combat is not what we’re talking about here. The people on this ‘hit list’ are likely to be killed while at home, sleeping in their bed, driving in a car with friends or family, or engaged in a whole array of other activities. More critically still, the Obama administration—like the Bush administration before it—defines the ‘battlefield’ as the entire world.

Representative Jane Harman, a Democrat who at the time chaired the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, described Awlaki as “probably the person, the terrorist, who would be terrorist No. 1 in terms of threat against us.” She added that the Obama administration has “made very clear that people, including Americans who are trying to attack our country, are people we will definitely pursue…are targets of the United States.” On February 3, Admiral Dennis Blair, then the director of national intelligence, testified before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He confirmed that the Obama administration believed it had the right to kill US citizens, saying “a decision to use lethal force against a U.S. citizen must get special permission” and asserted that “being a U.S. citizen will not spare an American from getting assassinated by military or intelligence operatives overseas if the individual is working with terrorists and planning to attack fellow Americans.”

“I don’t know how comfortable people who follow these issues are when you begin to put a US citizen in the same category as a non-US citizen,” Nakhleh, who had left the CIA before Awlaki was placed on JSOC’s target list for assassination, told me. “There is some unease about this approach among people I talk to about targeting US citizens without due process.” The Obama administration apparently had little unease, however. Speaking of the US relationship with Yemen that allowed the United States to strike at will in the country, an anonymous senior administration official told the Washington Post, “We are very pleased with the direction this is going.” In Yemen, Nasser Awlaki read the story. And he decided to write directly to Obama. His letter, which was relayed to US officials by an American journalist, received no response:

TO: MR. BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America

I was very pleased when you were elected as President of the United States of America. In fact I spent the whole election night without sleep until it was declared by media that you were “President elect.”

I read your book “Dreams Of My Father” and I was really moved by it. You know that I myself went to America in 1966 on a Fulbright scholarship to study Agricultural Economics when I was twenty years old. My son “Anwar” was my first born child and I distributed many cigars to my faculty and friends at the New Mexico State University when he was born in 1971.

Because of my love of America I sent Anwar also to Colorado State University to get American education.

My son continued his education to graduate school where he began PhD Program at George Washington University in 2001.

Because of the unfortunate events of September eleven it became difficult for him to continue his education because of the bad treatment he got at the University and decided to go to the United Kingdom to complete his education, but he could not afford the expensive cost of his education and returned to Yemen. Since that time, he spent his time learning and preaching his religion and nothing else.

However, he was put into prison for more than 18 months as a result of a request from the U.S. Government. The FBI interviewed Anwar for two days in 2007 and found no links between him and the events of September eleven. After he was released from prison, he continued to be harassed and decided to leave Sana’a, the Capital of Yemen and live in a small town in Southern Yemen. Again, US spy plane was flying over the town for many months and when it was known that he was being tracked to be put in prison again he went to the mountains in Shabwa Province the land of his ancestors.

The Washington Post published an article on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 by Dana Priest in which she reported that you ordered the December 24th strike where “Anwar was supposed to be meeting with Al-Qaeda leaders.”

The Post reported that the CIA and the JSOC added Anwar to a list of so-called “High Value targets” whom they seek to kill or capture on the assumption that Anwar Al-Aulaqi is “an Al- Qaeda” figure. You know and I know that Anwar Al-Aulaqi has never been a member of this Organization and I hope that he will never be. He is simply a preacher who has the right to spread the word of Islam and wherever he likes and this is definitely lawful and protected by the American Constitution. So, I hope that you reconsider your order to kill or capture my son based on the wrong assumption that he is a member of Al-Qaeda. Again, I would like to inform you Mr. President Obama that my son is innocent, has nothing to do with violence and he is only a scholar of Islam and I believe that this has nothing to do with terrorism. So I plead again to you that you respect American law and if Anwar ever did anything wrong he should be prosecuted according to the principles of American law.

Sincerely yours,

Nasser A. Al-Aulaqi

Professor of Agricultural Economics

Sana’a University

The Republic of Yemen