Since it emerged that two New Zealanders were killed in a US-led drone strike last November in Yemen, rights organizations and other NGOs once again called for an immediate review of Washington’s extra-territorial counter-terror strategy, arguing that such targeted killings cannot be justifies within the parameters of the law.
The National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies warned “The American drone strike programme to prevent terrorism is ineffective and serves only to fuel Muslim militancy.”
Even though New Zealand Prime Minister, John Key attempted to diffuse the situation by arguing that should his office had been notified of the planned strike against his nationals he would have warranted the attack based on the “legitimacy” of the data, Professor Richard Jackson, Deputy Director of the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at Otago University warned that it is such disdain toward international law which rights activists aimed to combat.
Jackson stressed that should Russia or even China had chosen to take out its dissidents in such fashion the international community would have most likely slammed the attack as criminal.
But beyond the legality of such an attack on foreign nationals, rights activists have said the very fact that New Zealand was never made aware of the attack is most troubling.
An American anti-terrorism expert told reporters on Wednesday, “It's unlikely the New Zealand Government received advance warning of the deadly drone strike,” a statement which New Zealand PM seems somewhat to have reinforced in his comment to the press.
Once again America’s war on terror finds itself in the eye of the storm.