A Pakistani court may order a murder investigation and seek international arrest warrants for two high-ranking CIA officers who oversaw drone attacks on suspected militants.
Jonathan Banks, the former CIA station chief in Islamabad, and John Rizzo, the CIA’s ex-general counsel, committed murder by ordering strikes that allegedly killed hundreds of innocent civilians, Pakistani attorneys charged.
“We have statements from a further 82 victims’ families relating to more than 30 drone strikes,” Shahzad Akbar, a lawyer, with Pakistan’s Foundation for Fundamental Rights, said.The CIA and Rizzo, who is now in private practice, did not return requests for comment.
“This is their only hope of justice,” he said.
Last summer, Akbar, along with attorneys for the British anti-death-penalty coalition Reprieve, filed court papers demanding that Pakistani authorities classify the drone strikes — a cornerstone of the covert US war against al Qaeda — as murder.
An Islamabad court is expected to render a decision soon on Akbar’s petition, the paper reported.
If the petition is granted the court could ask the international police network Interpol to issue a “red notice,” which is similar to an international arrest warrant.
It is unclear if Interpol would honor the request because its charter forbids it from “undertaking any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character.”
Banks was hastily recalled in December 2010 after a Pakistani tribesman outed him as the CIA station chief and accused him of killing his brother in a 2009 drone strike.
Since Banks was undercover and in the country on a business visa, he did not have diplomatic immunity and could have faced prosecution, Pakistani attorneys claimed at the time.
Rizzo was the Langley, Va.-based CIA general counsel who oversaw the drone program for many years until his retirement in October 2009.