Introduction

AuthorCraig Forcese
Pages1-5
1
Chapter 1
Introduion
[I would like to] ask the Prime Minier, what assessment he has made of
whether the Caroline principles on the right to self-defence under Article 51
of the UN Charter have been rily applied by the UKGovernment.
toM watson, MP (west BroMwiCh east) to david CaMeron,
PriMeMinister of the united kinGdoM (8 sePteMBer 2016)1
I  , twenty-one-year-old Reyaad Khan was a straight-A
student who dreamed of being prime minister of his country
of birth, Britain. By 2010, he was recording videos describing
the challenges of growing up in a deprived inner-city, and voicing
concern about his government’s expenditure of resources on “illegal”
wars. In 2013, he travelled to Syria and joined Daesh, the terror-
ist movement better known as the “Islamic State,” ISIS, or ISIL.2
As Daesh expanded in Iraq and Syria, Khan became, in the words
of British intelligence, a “signif‌icant, ongoing and imminent threat
to the UK.” He and co-conspirators were part of a “concerted and
prolif‌ic online campaign to recruit, task and encourage operatives
in the West to conduct attacks in the name of ISIL.” Khan became
a “prominent” attack planner. And he provided aspiring terrorists
with instructions on improvised explosive devices, and possible tar-
gets in Britain. This conduct was connected to plots thwarted by UK
authorities.3
On 21 August 2015, a Royal Air Force “Reaper” drone targeted
and killed Khan in Syria, also slaying another Briton and a Belgian
confederate.4 As the f‌irst lethal drone strike conducted by Britain

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