The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights have sued the Obama administration over its claim to have the authority to assassinate US citizens accused of terrorism links abroad. Earlier this year, the Obama administration added the US-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki to a CIA list of targets for capture or killing. Al-Awlaki is currently living in Yemen.

Jameel Jaffer, Deputy Legal Director of the ACLU: “One of the dangers with this kind of program, a targeted killing program, is that we will end up killing the wrong people. Dozens of times we’ve detained people as terrorists only to find out later that the evidence was weak, nonexistent or wrong. At least with detention there’s the possibility of a court challenge or the possibility of appeal, but there’s no appeal from a drone. There’s no appeal from a death sentence after it’s imposed.”

Vince Warren is executive director at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Vince Warren: “If we were to set the precedent of going around the world and killing people that the United States thinks are suspects, that would be setting probably one of the most dangerous precedents out there, because there would be nothing to stop, for example, China from targeting its citizens in the United States.”