Judge: Legal Justification for Killing Americans with Drones to Remain Secretselfnews Post The ACLU plans to appeal the decision. This ruling denies the public access to crucial information about the governments extrajudicial killing of U.S. citizens and also effectively green-lights its practice of making selective and self-serving disclosures, said Jameel Jaffer, ACLU deputy legal director. As the judge acknowledges, the targeted killing program raises profound questions about the appropriate limits on government power in our constitutional democracy. The public has a right to know more about the circumstances in which the government believes it can lawfully kill people, including U.S. citizens, who are far from any battlefield and have never been charged with a crime. The ACLUs FOIA request seeks disclosure of the legal memorandum written by the Department of Justices Office of Legal Counsel, which provided justifications for the targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, as well as records describing the legal and factual basis for the killings. The New York Times submitted a similar but narrower FOIA request, and the two resulting lawsuits filed in the Southern District of New York were combined. The government argued that the requested documents cannot be released, despite the fact that government officials have talked publicly on numerous occasions about al-Awlakis killing and the targeted killing program in general. The ACLU, together with the Center for Constitutional Rights, has also filed a lawsuit directly challenging the constitutionality of these targeted killings. The government has argued that case should also be dismissed. Todays opinion is at: www.aclu.org/files/assets/al-awlaki_foia_ruling.pdf Read other articles and press releases by selfnews Post Here linkwithin_text=Related Articles: 