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Sweden's Foreign Minister Misunderstands International Law

(Bloomberg) Noah Feldman - Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom warned in December that Israel might be committing "extrajudicial executions" in connection with stabbing attempts by Palestinians against Israeli citizens. Wallstrom defended herself in Sweden's parliament this week, insisting that she "was making an argument based on principles of international law." To what extent can international law be applied to instantaneous events that take place in the course of policing? As a teacher of international law, I find Wallstrom's interpretation at best confused, and at worst outright mistaken. On Wallstrom's theory, the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, would be an issue for international criminal investigation. The same would be true for the use of lethal force by police in Trollhattan, Sweden, against a man who killed three people at a school in October. He was armed with a sword, and police killed him with firearms. Wallstrom referred to "the right of self-defense and the importance of the principles of proportionality and distinction," which belong to the body of international law governing the use of military force in wartime against combatants. But they aren't relevant here. According to Philip Alston, who has served as a special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings for the UN, the legal standard is that police "may only use intentional lethal force when it is clear an individual is about to kill someone and cannot be detained by other means." Police are supposed to save the innocent and subdue the attackers, by lethal means if necessary. Wallstrom said that Israelis and Palestinians "were killed in connection with knife attacks." The Israelis were killed by Palestinians wielding knives. The Palestinians were killed after they wielded the knives, attacking Israelis. There's a crucial moral difference between the two kinds of "connection" to the knife attacks. The writer is a professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard University.
2016-01-18 00:00:00
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