The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) will take the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to court over US President Barack Obama’s assassination drone strikes.
The ACLU will go to a federal appeals court on Thursday after the US government refused to release documents related to the drone attacks, also known as the “targeted killing” program, The Guardian reported.
The ACLU has tried to file Freedom of Information Act requests to get information on the drone program from the CIA.
However, the CIA has refused to respond to the requests, saying that it cannot confirm the existence of the program.
In 2009, US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who was the former director of the CIA, said, "Because these are covert and secret operations, I can't go into particulars. I think it does suffice to say that these operations have been very effective."
“The notion that the CIA’s targeted killing program is a secret is nothing short of absurd,” ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer, who will argue the case before a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, said in a press release on Tuesday.
The US military has deployed assassination drones in Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq, and Yemen.
Washington claims that the drones target terrorists in the operations, but civilians have often been killed in the strikes.
AGB/MHB/AS
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