Flickr/Abode of Chaos
The Prime Minister announced yesterday that the targeted killing of Reyaad Khan by a UK drone flying over Syria was legal on the grounds of ‘self-defence’. Never mind the fact that parliament has voted twice to explicitly exclude Syria as a target for UK military action and that the Prime Minister has assured parliament on several occasions that no military action in Syria would take place without parliamentary approval. Never mind the fact the UK is not ‘at war’ with Syria and has no authorisation to invade Syrian airspace or to launch attacks on Syrian soil. Never mind the fact that the deliberate killing of a UK citizen is defined in English law as ‘murder’. Even withstanding all of that, does the UN Charter authorise targeted killing in ‘self-defence’ under article 51, as claimed by David Cameron and the Attorney General, Jeremy Wright?
Article 51 of the UN Charter is part of Chapter VII, which is entitled ‘Action With Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression’. Everything in this chapter, and indeed virtually every statement in the whole of the UN Charter, refers to the action of states, not of individuals. However, even if the action of an individual were considered to be a threat to (world) peace, that would be up to the UN Security Council to determine, not up to an individual state like the UK.
