ABSTRACT

The Special Rapporteur is grateful to Hina Shamsi of the Project on Extrajudicial Executions at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, New York University School of Law, for her superb assistance in the preparation of this report. As a threshold matter, the argument assumes that targeted killings by the CIA are committed in the context of armed conflict, which may not be the case. Outside of armed conflict, killings by the CIA would constitute extrajudicial executions assuming that they do not comply with human rights law. Both IHL and human rights law apply in the context of armed conflict; whether a particular killing is legal is determined by the applicable lex specialis. To the extent a State uses intelligence agents for targeted killing to shield its operations from IHL and human rights law transparency and accountability requirements, it could also incur State responsibility for violating those requirements.