Ben Emmerson QC, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and counter-terrorism, has picked up Imtiaz Gul, the executive director of the independent Centre of Research and Security Studies, as part of a group of international specialists who will examine CIA and Pentagon covert drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
The second Pakistani on the panel of experts is Justice Shah Jehan Khan Yousafzai who has spent two decades as senior judge in the circuit of Peshawar high court, has heard high-profile legal challenges to the drone campaign.
Ben Emmerson announced the launch of the enquiry in London on Jan 24th saying that those states using this technology and those on whose territory it is used are under an international law obligation to establish effective independent and impartial investigations into any drone attack in which it is plausibly alleged that civilian casualties were sustained.’
Inclusion of two Pakistani experts i.e. Imtiaz Gul, a multiple author and security analyst, and Justice Shah Jehan Khan Yousafzai, who boasts a long legal career plus an in-depth understanding of the implications of the controversial drone strikes underscore a growing international appreciation of the public resentment of the CIA-operated drone strikes.
CRSS helped Emmerson in compiling cases wherein innocent people, mostly women and children, became victims of the predator attacks.
One area the inquiry is expected to examine is the deliberate targeting of rescuers and funeral-goers by the CIA in Pakistan, as revealed in an investigation by the Bureau for the Sunday Times.
Emmerson recalled that the Bureau had (in October 2012) alleged that since President Obama took office at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims and more than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. Christof Heyns [UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killing] … has described such attacks, if they prove to have happened, as war crimes. I would endorse that view.’
The American Civil Liberties Union welcomed the UN inquiry, and called on the US to aid investigators. ‘Whether it does or not will show whether it holds itself to the same obligation to co-operate with UN human rights investigations that it urges on other countries,” said Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU’s Human Rights Programme.
