Boris Johnson claims drone strike on Jihadi John was ‘payback’ for video executions
BORIS Johnson risked a liberal backlash last night after boasting the RAF droned Jihadi fighters in Syria as "payback” rather than because they posed a threat to Britain.
The ex-Foreign Secretary said legal justification for assassinating British terrorists abroad “scarcely masks the reality that killing them is also retributive — payback for the filmed executions of innocent people”.
But government lawyers have gone to great lengths to assure critics such killings are only legal to keep Brits safe.
Weighing into the row in government about what to do about the two remaining Jihadi “Beatles” — Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh — who could face the death penalty in America, Mr Johnson backed the decision to send them for trial.
But he argued the panic about them facing the death penalty in America was absurd as there would have been legal justification for assassinating them by drone if possible in Syria — like we did with the ISIS butcher Jihadi John.
Writing in today’s Spectator magazine, Mr Johnson said: “let’s suppose there was a Reaper drone overhead, and that British intelligence could help send a missile neatly through their windscreen.”
He said: "Would we provide the details — knowing that they would be killed without a chance for their lawyers to offer pleas in mitigation on account of their tough childhoods in west London?
“Would the British state, in these circumstances, have connived in straightforward extrajudicial killing? Too damn right we would.”
But he risked sparking a row by adding: “Of course we legally justify these drone strike assassinations as preventative: to stop future acts of terror in Syria.
“But that scarcely masks the reality that killing them is also retributive — payback for the filmed executions of innocent people.”
MOST READ IN NEWS
And he argued that support for these killings made a mockery for the panic over what might happen to the pair in America.
He said: “The best hope of bringing Kotey and Elsheikh to justice is in America, and in sending them there the UK government has not dropped its opposition to the death penalty.
“We had to balance two risks: the risk that they would be simply set loose, like so many other jihadis, to roam the streets of London again, or the small risk that they might receive the death penalty under the US system.”
GOT a story? RING The Sun on 0207 782 4104 or WHATSAPP on 07423720250 or EMAIL [email protected]