FOLLOWING the uproar questioning the legality of the UK drone assassination of a British citizen in Syria, a letter to the UN casts doubt on Prime Minister’s claims to Parliament that the UK was acting in ‘self defence’.
On Monday, on the same day as Cameron told MPs that strikes he had ordered in Syria were legal because they were taken ‘for the self-defence of the UK’, the British Ambassador, Matthew Rycroft put forward an entirely different position.
In a letter, the British Ambassador stated that ‘ISIL is engaged in an ongoing armed attack against Iraq, and therefore action against ISIL in Syria is lawful in the collective self-defence of Iraq’.
The letter, published yesterday by the UN, is the UK’s official submission to the Security Council outlining the legal justification for the strikes under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. While it states that the drone strike ‘was a necessary and proportionate exercise of the individual right of self-defence of the United Kingdom,’ it also argues that ‘action against ISIL in Syria is lawful in the collective self-defence of Iraq’.
The latter statement was not made to MPs, and is at odds with Parliament’s vote in 2013 blocking strikes on Syria. Kat Craig, Legal Director of Reprieve’s Abuses in Counter-Terrorism team, said: ‘The Prime Minister’s supposed reasons for carrying out this unprecedented drone attack seem to be changing by the day.’
