Al Qaeda complains that the US broke the law

Al Qaeda’s Yemeni wing charged the U.S. violated its own Constitution and laws in the targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, according to a statement on Monday confirming the American-born cleric is dead.

Like presidential candidate Ron Paul and others who have condemned the killing as an unconstitutional, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula used a legal argument to attack the drone assassination of the cleric and another American citizen, Samir Khan, who produced the Al Qaeda web magazine Inspire.

“The Americans killed the scholar Shaykh Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, but they did not prove any crime they committed and they never presented any proof against them from their laws of unjust freedom,” AQAP wrote according to a translation of the statement by Flashpoint Partners. “So, where is the freedom, justice, human rights and respect of freedoms they boast of? Did America become so suffocated that it contradicted — and everyday it contradicts — these principles it claims it established its country on?”

Declare war against a sovereign nation = get treated like an enemy of a sovereign nation. Don’t want to ended up targeted as a terrorist leader? Don’t become a terrorist leader.