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Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill on extrajudicial killings

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"Robert Gibbs should be ashamed of himself, for what he said….The crime that this 16 year old American citizen had committed was having a father who the United States government secretly ordered assassinated without trial or without indictment. The idea that you would have someone that just a few years ago was the public face of the administration almost gleefully react to your question about the killing of a US citizen in a targeted assassination operation — I think is disgraceful.

The fact of the matter is that Abdulrahman al Aulaqi was a normal 16 year old boy who hadn't seen his father since May of 2009. He had a Facebook page. He had an unruly haircut that his grandfather was constantly telling him to do something about. He liked hip-hop music. He was just the antithesis of a terrorist or a terrorist suspect. And the US government has never been able to identify who they were targeting in that strike….

This is an absolute crime, that this government has not produced a single word of explanation except for Robert Gibbs' shameful blaming of Abdulrahman al Aulaqi's death on his lineage. It's shocking to me, on one level. And on another level, it makes perfect sense, because these people are drunk with power."

Read more about the killing of Abdulrahman al Aulaqi. 

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