UN expert asks US to stop drone attacks

GENEVA - The United States must stop carrying out lethal attacks using drones, particularly as these are under the command of its intelligence service, a United Nations human rights expert said Wednesday.

“The most prolific user of targeted killings today is the United States, which primarily uses drones for attacks,” said Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, who presented a report on the subject to the UN Human Rights Council.

While there were times when using unmanned planes was legal on the battlefield against combatants, Alston said the US was increasingly using the drones away from areas of combat, leading to civilian deaths.

“I do not for a moment question the seriousness of the challenges posed by terrorism. I condemn wholeheartedly the actions of Al Qaeda,” Alston said.

“But the fact that such enemies do not play by the rules does not mean that a Government can cast those rules aside or unilaterally reinterpret them”.

The UN expert said that the use of the drones by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), presented an accountability problem, as “this programme remains shrouded in official secrecy”, which prevented scrutiny as to whether the actions were legal.

“Intelligence agencies, which by definition are determined to remain unaccountable except to their own paymasters, have no place in running programs that kill people in other countries,” Alston charged.