Israel Matzav

Bin Laden's 'human rights'

Last Wednesday, I reported that UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay had expressed concern that Osama Bin Laden's 'human rights' may have been viollated when he was liquidated by US Navy SEALS, and demanded that the US turn over details of what happened. Anne Bayefsky reports that it's getting worse.

On Friday, two professors and part-time U.N. “experts,” Christof Heyns and Martin Scheinin, issued a joint statement on Bin Laden’s killing. The two academics claimed that “the norm should be that terrorists be dealt with as criminals, through legal processes of arrest, trial and judicially-decided punishment.” They also insisted that the U.N. was entitled to receive “more facts” “to allow an assessment in terms of international human rights law standards.” Those standards would be violated, they claimed, unless “the planning of the mission allowed an effort to capture Bin Laden.”

The suggestion from these two U.N. authority-figures that America is criminally at fault for killing Bin Laden if their terms have not been satisfied is both offensive and legally false.

Under the laws of war, combatants are a “legitimate” target for attack. A protocol to the Geneva Conventions defines a legitimate military target as one “which…makes an effective contribution to military action and whose…destruction…offers a definite military advantage.” This description fits Usama bin Laden. Bin Laden’s killing was, therefore, a justifiable homicide and incurs no liability. There was no necessity that the Navy SEALs must have intended to arrest him or make an effort to capture him alive.

In the minds of those at the U.N, however, the life-and-death struggle to defend freedom from Islamic terrorists is occurring in a vacuum. They insist that the applicable legal regime is international human rights law which considers the single individual and prohibits the arbitrary deprivation of life, requires due process and condemns anything else as “extrajudicial” killing. Their response to the laws of warfare is: “what war?”

It gets worse - wait until you see what the UN Security Council issued as a 'Presidential statement' last Monday. Read the whole thing.

Remember how Obama subjected the US to that disgraceful show in the 'Human Rights Council' in which the United States' human rights record was subject to criticism by the likes of Cuba, Libya and Saudi Arabia? I wonder if - to set an example for Omar al-Bashir of course - Obama is willing to place himself in the dock at the International Criminal Court in the Hague for ordering Osama Bin Laden killed. Wouldn't that be rich?

And by the way, given that the Goldstone Commission insisted that Israel put individual soldiers on trial, does this mean that Obama is going to put the hero SEALS from the Navy on trial for killing Bin Laden?

What could go wrong?

Labels: Barack Obama, Navi Pillay, Osama Bin Laden, United Nations Human Rights Council

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:16 AM