Let me make it clear from the outset that I have absolutely no sympathy for Reyaad Khan or Ruhul Amin who were fighting for ISIS at the time. I’m sad for their families, who never asked for any of this. But Khan and Amin were stupid, misguided and arrogant young men who signed up to an organisation which thinks it just fine to oppress and rape women, to enslave and/or brutalise non-believers, to throw gay people from high buildings and to destroy the cultural heritage of the lands they occupy. They went off to a foreign land where they had no business being in order to kill those who don’t share their narrow misinterpretation of a holy book.
But, and it is a huge but, that doesn’t mean that the British state which ordered their deaths should escape close scrutiny. By killing these two young men Britain has become a state which practises summary justice. Summary justice is quick and easy but the great problem with summary justice is that it’s very difficult to distinguish it from summary injustice. Summary justice is no justice at all.
Whichever way you look at it, the British state has now sanctioned the assassination of British citizens, without trial, without public disclosure of the evidence against them and without accountability. I think that's a dark and dangerous road to go down. The fact that a drone strike is carried out remotely and in a foreign land doesn’t make it any less of a death squad hit. Whether we like it or not, we now live in a country which has a hit list of its citizens whose deaths can be ordered by politicians behind closed doors for reasons that are not disclosed and on evidence that is not revealed.
We condemn ISIS at so many levels: we condemn it because it practises a perversion of justice that is manifestly anything but just; we condemn it because it turns to mindless violence as a first option; we condemn it because we like to think that we occupy the moral high ground, that we have fair laws, that we have just rules, that we have impartial courts, that we have compassion and understanding as well as justice and punishment, that violence is never, never our first option. Sadly ordering drone strikes drags us down to the same level as Khan and Amin. I know it's easy to say but very difficult to bring about but they should have been captured and put on trial. Am I being stupid expecting that a democratic state should adhere to higher standards? I want our government to be better than the likes of Khan and Amin, not to adopt their tactics and methods and then demand that we trust blindly in its judgement and dare not challenge its word.
David Cameron told the House of Commons that “we are dealing with people who are producing such a tempo of terrorist attacks – attacks on police and members of the armed services, attempted attacks on commemorations in our country”. So when and where did these attacks or attempted attacks take place? Who tried to carry them out and how? How were they stopped and by whom? Have any arrests been made? Will anybody be tried in court? What role did the three dead Britons in Syria play? Cameron sidesteps all such questions by citing “issues of national security”. Even the details of the Attorney General’s advice are unavailable. We just have to accept his good faith and that of the PM, the intelligence chiefs and the military. Mmm, now where have I heard that before?
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