Another Lawsuit Over Drone Killing Filed

It’s nice to see everybody isn’t kowtowing the United States government. Anwar al-Awlaki and his son may very well have been evil men but they were American citizens and were murdered by the United States government without receiving their constitutionally guaranteed right to trial. Last year Charlie Savage and The New York Times filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice (DoJ) because they were unwilling to release the memo that ordered the execution of Anwar and his son. Now al-Awlaki’s relatives are filing a lawsuit against senior national security officials:

Relatives of three American citizens killed in drone strikes in Yemen last year filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against four senior national security officials on Wednesday. The suit, in the Federal District Court here, opened a new chapter in the legal wrangling over the Obama administration’s use of drones in pursuit of terrorism suspects away from traditional “hot” battlefields like Afghanistan.

The first strike, on Sept. 30, killed a group of people including Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who was born in New Mexico, and Samir Khan, a naturalized American citizen who lived at times in Queens, Long Island and North Carolina. The second, on Oct. 14, killed a group of people including Mr. Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was born in Colorado.

“The killings violated fundamental rights afforded to all U.S. citizens, including the right not to be deprived of life without due process of law,” the complaint says.

Press officials with the C.I.A., the Pentagon and the Justice Department declined to comment.

I didn’t realize there were three American citizens murdered by the United States government, I was only aware of Anwar al-Awalki and his son, this story just keeps getting worse. The federal government used to claim non-citizens weren’t afforded the same rights as citizens to justify blatantly ignoring due process. Now they don’t even pretend citizens have any right of due process, if you’re a thorn in the state’s side you’re execution is ordered. Murdering American citizens, the people that the federal government is sworn to protect, without so much as due process is the single scariest thing the Obama administration has done. Even Bush, the tyrant that he was, tried to pretend the federal government was in the business of protecting American citizens.