There are a number of potential problems
Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2025 8:32 am
Self-defence
While the US has not explained how its actions were internationally lawful, it might be acting upon the assumption that its intervention was justified upon the basis of self-defence in response to the embassy attacks in 1998, although the US did not report its actions as such to the UN Security Council as required by Article 51 of the Charter. Indeed, a former Legal Adviser at the US State Department noted that ‘international law … permits extraterritorial “arrests” in situations which permit a valid claim of whatsapp number list self-defense’ (see (1990) 84 AJIL 725, at 727).with the invocation of self-defence in justification of such an intervention. First, what was the ‘armed attack’ for the purposes of Article 51 of the UN Charter? Al-Liby is accused of being the leader of the al-Qaida element that carried out the embassy bombings in 1998 which killed over 220 people, and one can assume that this is the attack that the US was responding to. Even if the concept of ‘armed attack’ incorporates a gravity threshold, as was (controversially) held by the International Court of Justice in the Nicaragua case, that threshold would have been met here. Second, no state was directly implicated in the bombings.
The debate regarding whether non-state actors can be perpetrators of an armed attack for the purposes of the right of self-defence is now well covered, particularly after the attacks of 9/11. While a certain conservative spirit is discernible in this respect in the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice (eg the Wall advisory opinion), recent state practice and scholarly opinion would nonetheless seem to have confirmed that the traditional inter-state position is no longer valid, if, indeed, it ever was. In particular, there have been instances of general acceptance by the international community on past occasions for responses in self-defence against actions of al-Qaida, most notably 9/11.
While the US has not explained how its actions were internationally lawful, it might be acting upon the assumption that its intervention was justified upon the basis of self-defence in response to the embassy attacks in 1998, although the US did not report its actions as such to the UN Security Council as required by Article 51 of the Charter. Indeed, a former Legal Adviser at the US State Department noted that ‘international law … permits extraterritorial “arrests” in situations which permit a valid claim of whatsapp number list self-defense’ (see (1990) 84 AJIL 725, at 727).with the invocation of self-defence in justification of such an intervention. First, what was the ‘armed attack’ for the purposes of Article 51 of the UN Charter? Al-Liby is accused of being the leader of the al-Qaida element that carried out the embassy bombings in 1998 which killed over 220 people, and one can assume that this is the attack that the US was responding to. Even if the concept of ‘armed attack’ incorporates a gravity threshold, as was (controversially) held by the International Court of Justice in the Nicaragua case, that threshold would have been met here. Second, no state was directly implicated in the bombings.
The debate regarding whether non-state actors can be perpetrators of an armed attack for the purposes of the right of self-defence is now well covered, particularly after the attacks of 9/11. While a certain conservative spirit is discernible in this respect in the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice (eg the Wall advisory opinion), recent state practice and scholarly opinion would nonetheless seem to have confirmed that the traditional inter-state position is no longer valid, if, indeed, it ever was. In particular, there have been instances of general acceptance by the international community on past occasions for responses in self-defence against actions of al-Qaida, most notably 9/11.