US plans to legally justify targeted killings of Americans

The underpinning legal principles of the issue will be discussed by US Attorney General Eric Holder at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago on Monday afternoon.

The initiative came after the US administration was pressured by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to provide justifications that killing Americans suspected of terrorist acts is a legitimate act.

The US-based rights group filed a lawsuit in a New York court on February 1, demanding the disclosure of documents authorizing targeting Americans overseas using lethal force.

Citing a 2011 killing of US born Anwar al-Awlaqi in a US assassination drone attack in Yemen, the ACLU called for "basic -- and accurate -- information about the government's targeted killing program.”

The development comes as the United States has also been criticized severely over the killing of civilians in drone strikes in Pakistan.

UK-based rights group Amnesty International has also censured the American government over its assassination drone attacks inside Pakistani territories. It called on the US to monitor civilian casualties inflicted by the drone attacks in Pakistan after US President Barack Obama defended the use of the unmanned aircraft.

This is while Defense Department lawyer Jeh Johnson claimed earlier in February that the US pursued legitimate military targets overseas and rejected allegations that the US was engaged in assassinations.

"Under well-settled legal principles, lethal force against a valid military objective, in an armed conflict, is consistent with the law of war and does not, by definition, constitute an 'assassination,'" Johnson claimed at the Yale University’s Law School.

Despite the claims by Washington that the unmanned aircrafts target militants and their strongholds, victims of such attacks have been predominantly civilians.