A morte de Osama bin Laden foi legal?

Uma interessante postagem no blog jurídico do WSJ discute, inconclusivamente e apenas para fins "acadêmicos", a juridicidade da intervenção norte-americana para prender ou matar Osama bin Laden. Tão interessante quanto o posting, são os comentários que revelam o lado revanchista da medida. E a tradição do país, de matar o inimigo político. Em vez de submetê-lo ao devido processo.

Nem de longe nutro simpatia por práticas violentas. De um lado ou de outro. Pagou-se violência com violência bruta. Nem institucionalizada nem simbólica. Violência pura. Não há razões normativas no direito internacional para justificar a operação, curiosamente, chamada de "Gerônimo". A autodefesa não chega a ponto de autorizar que um Estado atue, sem respeitar a soberania de outro, sequer seu inimigo ou parte na contenda, como atuaram os Estados Unidos. Não tenho dúvidas, porém, que há muitas informações que desconhecemos. Como escreveu Jeb Rubenfield, ao criticar o unilateralismo estadunidense, o direito internacional diferencia jus ad bellum e jus in bello. Atenua-se a gravidade do ato: a morte de Osama pode ter sido ilegal, mas não criminosa. O futuro não é hoje. Espero que, para a saúde do direito, convençamo-nos de que se fez mesmo justiça. Com o direito.

Leia o posting de Ashby Jones:

Was the Strike on bin Laden’s Compound Legal?

The question in the title of this post is largely an academic one.

After all, bin Laden is dead. And pretty much the entire western world seems to think that the strike ordered by President Barack Obama against the al Qaeda leader was justified.

Nevertheless, call us crazy, but part of us would like assurance that what happened Sunday night was, in fact, in compliance with international law.

For a little help, we turn to this post over at the BLT Blog, which renders the verdict that, yes, the strike was most likely legal. According to the post:

John Bellinger III, who served as the State Department’s top lawyer during President George W. Bush’s second term, said the strike was on solid legal footing. Under domestic law, Bellinger said the strike falls in the “sweet spot” of the 2001 congressional authorization for the use of military force against al-Qaeda. Under international law, he said it’s justified by the United States’ right to defend itself and because of the ongoing armed conflict with al-Qaeda.

John Rasdan, a professor at William Mitchell College of Law and an assistant general counsel at the CIA from 2002 to 2004, agreed, saying that the administration might even be able to justify the move as a “legitimate act of self-defense.”Furthermore, a 1976 executive order that bans assassinations doesn’t apply here, experts said, because the United States is at war with al-Qaeda.

The 1976 order refers to “the kind of assassinations that the CIA attempted in ’60s and ’70s,” said Jeffrey Smith, an Arnold & Porter partner who was CIA general counsel in the mid-1990s. “Here, it’s fundamentally different. Here, Osama led a non-state actor group that had openly directed attacks against the United States.”

Over at the New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin creates a headache-inducing counterfactual:

If [bin Laden] he had been taken into custody, what followed would have been the most complex and wrenching legal proceeding in American history. The difficulties would have been endless: military tribunal or criminal trial? Abroad—at Guantánamo?—or inside the United States? Would bin Laden have been granted access to the evidence against him? Who would represent him? What if he represented himself, and tried to use the trial as a propaganda platform? All those questions faded into irrelevance with bin Laden’s death on Sunday.

Toobin agrees that the strike was likely legal. Still, he cautions against starting the slide down the old slippery slope:

[I]t’s worth remembering what gave rise to the ban on assassinations. It is, to put it mildly, an easy power to abuse. Bin Laden didn’t get a trial and didn’t deserve one. But the number of people for whom that is true is small. At least it should be.