President George Bush has given the CIA permission to kill about two dozen top terrorism suspects around the world whom it believes are plotting to attack American interests, a report said on Sunday.
The New York Times said that Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeida leaders top the list. Bush has given the CIA the go-ahead to kill the listed suspects if it is impractical to capture them and if civilian casualties can be minimised, the paper said.
White House and CIA officials declined to discuss the list, the Times said.
But it quoted anonymous US officials as saying that the approval of the list did not abolish a long-standing presidential executive order banning assassinations, as the terrorists are defined as ”enemy combatants” and thus legal targets.
A secret finding signed by the president after the September 11 attacks directs the CIA to covertly attack al-Qaeda anywhere in the world. The authority makes no exception for Americans, so permission to strike them is understood rather than specifically described, officials said.
The CIA already has killed one American under this authority, although US officials maintained last month that he wasn’t the target.
On November 3, a CIA-operated Predator drone fired a missile that destroyed a carload of suspected al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen. The target of the attack, a Yemeni named Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, was the top al-Qaeda operative in that country. Efforts by Yemeni authorities to detain him had previously failed.
The CIA didn’t know a US citizen, Yemeni-American Kamal
Derwish, was in the car. He died, along with al-Harethi and four other Yemenis.
The Bush administration said the killing of an American in this fashion was legal.
”I can assure you that no constitutional questions are raised here. There are authorities that the president can give to officials,” said Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s national security adviser, after the attack. ”He’s well within the balance of accepted practice and the letter of his constitutional authority.” – Sapa-AP