Is It Legal to Try to Kill Qaddafi? Probably

By artappraiser on Sat, 06/11/2011 - 5:54pm |

By Joshua E. Keating, Foreignpolicy.com, June 10, 2011

....The law is vague. The long-standing reluctance of militaries to engage in the targeted killing of heads of state is based more on custom than codified regulation. (It's not really in the interest of presidents and prime ministers for that sort of thing to become common practice.)

The closest thing in international law to a ban on assassination is the 1907 Hague Convention on the laws of war....

Moreover, Security Council Resolution 1973....

What about U.S. law? An executive order signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981 -- updating an earlier order by President Gerald Ford -- states that....

URL:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/06/10/is_it_legal_to_try_to_kill_qaddafi