An extrajudicial killing (shortened to EJK; also known as an extrajudicial execution or an extralegal killing) refers to the act of a governmental authority killing a person without the lawful authority granted by a judicial proceeding. Such killings are usually carried out with the approval of the regime ordering them. Deaths caused by legal police actions (such as self defense) or legal warfighting on a battlefield are generally not included.
Examples of executions without lawful trial, including acts of attainder
Thomas Cromwell (1540): Alongside other contemporary cases, Cromwell's enemies would not risk a public trial. Instead, he was condemned by a bill of attainder — a legislative act that declared him guilty without a trial.
Concino Concini (1617): Apprehended on the bridge of the Louvre castle, Concini was killed by guards after allegedly calling out "À moi !" ("To me!") for help, which was interpreted as resistance. The action was the result of a secret plot organised by king Louis XIII. and de Luynes, which was then executed by L'Hôpital. Concini had to be eliminated because he was perceived by Louis as a menace—a powerful politician, having a personal army of 7,000 soldiers and important supporters and contacts among the aristocrats of France. After his murder, the Queen Mother was ordered to retire to Blois.
Night of the Long Knives (1934)
United Nations Morris Tidball-Binz was appointed the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions on 1 April 2021 by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).Morris Tidball-Binz OHCHRSpecial Rapporteur on executions OHCHR
Human rights groups Many human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, campaign against extrajudicial punishment.
The Human Rights Measurement Initiative measures the right to freedom from extrajudicial execution for countries around the world, using a survey of in-country human rights experts.
International law
Law of war
Article 3(d) of the First Geneva Convention explicitly prohibits carrying out executions without passing a prior judgement by a competent and regularly constituted court with all commonly recognized judicial guarantees for everyone taking part in the trial.
Africa
Burundi
Extrajudicial killings and death squads are common in Burundi.
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Extrajudicial killings and death squads are common in Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Egypt
Extrajudicial killings and death squads are common in Egypt. Egypt recorded and reported more than a dozen unlawful extrajudicial killings of apparent ‘terrorists’ in the country by the NSA officers and the Interior Ministry police in September 2021. A 101-page report detailed the ‘armed militants’ being killed in shootouts despite not posing any threat to the security forces or nations of the country while being killed, which in many cases were already in custody. Statements by the family and relatives of those killed claimed that the victims were not involved in any armed or violent activities.
Eritrea
The 2019 Universal Periodic Review of the United Nations Human Rights Council found that in 2016, Eritrean authorities committed extrajudicial killings, in the context of a "persistent, widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population" since 1991, including "the crimes of enslavement, imprisonment, enforced disappearance, torture, other inhumane acts, persecution, rape and murder".
Ethiopia
Extrajudicial killings and death squads are common in Ethiopia.
Ivory Coast Extrajudicial killings and death squads are common in Ivory Coast.
Kenya Extrajudicial executions are common in informal settlements in Kenya. Killings are also common in Northern Kenya under the guise of counter-terrorism operations.
Libya Extrajudicial killings and death squads are common in Libya.
South Africa
Mob justice is a common practice in South Africa.
Ghana
Mob justice is also prevalent in Ghana, where communities similarly resort to extrajudicial violence in response to perceived criminal activity or witchcraft.
Americas
Argentina
Argentina's National Reorganization Process military dictatorship during the 1976–1983 period used extrajudicial killings systematically as way of crushing the opposition in the so-called "Dirty War" or what is known in Spanish as La Guerra Sucia. During this violent period, it is estimated that the military regime killed between eleven thousand and fifteen thousand people and most of the victims were known or suspected to be opponents of the regime. These included intellectuals, labor leaders, human rights workers, priests, nuns, reporters, politicians, and artists as well as their relatives. Half of the number of extrajudicial killings were reportedly carried out by the murder squad that operated from a detention center in Buenos Aires called Escuela de Mecanica de la Armada. The dirty wars in Argentina sometimes triggered even more violent conflicts since the killings and crackdowns precipitated responses from insurgents.
Brazil
Extrajudicial killings and death squads are common in Brazil. Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, son of President Jair Bolsonaro, was accused of having ties to death squads.
Chile
When General Augusto Pinochet assumed power in the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, he immediately ordered the purges, torture, and deaths of more than 3,000 supporters of the previous democratic socialist government without trial. During his regime, which lasted from 1973 to 1989, elements of the Chilean Armed Forces and police continued committing extrajudicial killings. These included Manuel Contreras, the former head of Chile's National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), which served as Pinochet's secret police. He was behind numerous assassinations and human rights abuses such as the 1974 abduction and forced disappearance of Socialist Party of Chile leader Victor Olea Alegria. Some of the killings were also coordinated with other right-wing dictatorships in the Southern Cone in the so-called Operation Condor. There were reports of United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) involvement, particularly within its activities in Central and South America that promoted anti-Communist coups. While CIA's complicity was not proven, American dollars supported the regimes that carried out extrajudicial killings such as the Pinochet administration. CIA, for instance, helped create DINA and the agency admitted that Contreras was one of its assets.
Colombia
Extrajudicial killings and death squads are common in Colombia.
An investigation of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace found that from 2002 to 2008, 6402 civilians were killed by the Government of Colombia, falsely claimed to be FARC rebels by the Military Forces of Colombia.
El Salvador
Extrajudicial killings and death squads are common in El Salvador. During the Salvadoran Civil War, death squads achieved notoriety when far-right vigilantes assassinated Archbishop Óscar Romero for his social activism in March 1980. In December 1980, four Americans—three nuns and a lay worker—were raped and murdered by a military unit later found to have been acting on specific orders. Death squads were instrumental in killing hundreds of peasants and activists, including such notable priests as Rutilio Grande. Because the death squads involved were found to have been soldiers of the Salvadoran Armed Forces, which was receiving U.S. funding and training from American advisors during the Carter administration, these events prompted outrage in the U.S. and led to a temporary cutoff in military aid from the Reagan administration, although death squad activity stretched well into the Reagan years (1981–1989) as well.
Honduras
Honduras also had death squads active through the 1980s, the most notorious of which was Battalion 316. Hundreds of people, including teachers, politicians and union bosses, were assassinated by government-backed forces. Battalion 316 received substantial support and training from the United States Central Intelligence Agency.
Jamaica Extrajudicial killings and death squads are common in Jamaica. Note: first page of this article is missing from The Washington Post website, but can be found here
Mexico
Extrajudicial killings and death squads are common in Mexico.
Suriname
On 7, 8, and 9 December 1982 fifteen prominent Surinamese men who had criticized Dési Bouterse's ruling military regime were murdered. This tragedy is known as the December murders. The acting commander of the army Dési Bouterse was sentenced to 20 years in prison by the Surinamese court martial on 29 November 2019.
United States
Based on a survey of human rights experts administered by the Human Rights Measurement Initiative, the U.S. scores a 4.1 on a scale of 0–10 on the right to freedom from extrajudicial execution.
Lynching
Lynching was the extrajudicial killings which began in the United States' pre–Civil War South in the 1830s and ended during the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Although the victims of lynchings were members of various ethnicities, after roughly 4 million enslaved African Americans were emancipated, they became the primary targets of white Southerners. Lynchings in the U.S. reached their height from the 1890s to the 1920s, and they primarily victimised ethnic minorities. Most of the lynchings occurred in the American South because the majority of African Americans lived there, but racially motivated lynchings also occurred in the Midwest and border states.
Targeted killing
One issue regarding extrajudicial killing is the legal and moral status of targeted killing by unmanned aerial vehicles of the United States.
Section 3(a) of the United States Torture Victim Protection Act contains a definition of extrajudicial killing:
There had been just under 2,500 assassinations by targeted drone strike by 2015, and these too have been questioned as being extrajudicial killings.
Concerns about targeted and sanctioned killings of non-Americans and American citizens in overseas counter-terrorism activities have been raised by lawyers, news firms and private citizens.
President Barack Obama On 30 September 2011 a drone strike in Yemen killed American citizens Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan. Both resided in Yemen at the time of their deaths. The executive order approving Al-Awlaki's death was issued by Barack Obama in 2010, and was challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights in that year. The U.S. president issued an order, approved by the National Security Council, that Al-Awlaki's normal legal rights as a civilian should be suspended and his death should be imposed, as he was a threat to the United States. The reasons provided to the public for approval of the order were Al-Awlaki's links to the 2009 Fort Hood Massacre and the 2009 Christmas Day bomb plot, the attempted destruction of a Detroit-bound passenger-plane. The following month, al-Awlaki's son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, an American citizen, was killed by another US drone strike and in January 2017 Nawar al-Awlaki, al-Awlaki's eight-year-old daughter, also an American citizen and half-sister of Abdulrahman, was shot to death during the raid on Yakla by American forces along with between 9 and 29 other civilians, up to 14 al-Qaeda fighters, and American Navy SEAL William Owens.
President Donald Trump President Donald Trump continued the practice of extrajudicial killings of his predecessor. Those killed under this policy include: Qasem Soleimani, killed in Baghdad by a drone strike on 3 January 2020
The New York Times reported 13 November 2020 that Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah was assassinated 7 August 2020 on the streets of Tehran by Israeli operatives at the behest of the United States, according to four intelligence officials of the United States.