Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T05:54:06.532Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

High Altitude Legality: Visuality and Jurisdiction in the Adjudication of NATO Air Strikes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2019

Christiane Wilke
Christiane Wilke*
Affiliation:
Law and Legal Studies, Carleton University, christiane.wilke@carleton.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Air strikes are the signature modality of violence used by NATO militaries. When civilian victims of NATO air strikes have turned to courts in NATO countries, they have generally not been successful. What are the legal techniques and legal knowledges deployed in Western courts that render Western aerial violence legal or extralegal? The article analyzes the responses by European courts to two sets of NATO bombings: the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia and a September 2009 air strike near Kunduz, Afghanistan. The judgments rely on two forms of “legal technicalities”: the drawing of jurisdictional boundaries that exclude the airspace taken up by the bombers and the ground on which victims stood when they were killed as well as particular visual regimes that facilitate not seeing people on the ground as civilians.

Résumé

Les frappes aériennes constituent la modalité de violence de prédilection utilisée par les forces armées de l’OTAN. Lorsque les victimes civiles de ces frappes aériennes se sont adressées aux tribunaux des pays membres de l’OTAN, elles n’ont généralement pas obtenu gain de cause. Quelles sont les techniques et les savoirs juridiques déployés dans les tribunaux occidentaux qui ont pour effet de rendre les violences aériennes occidentales légales ou extralégales? En réponse à cette question, le présent article analyse les réponses des tribunaux européens à l’endroit de deux séries de bombardements ordonnés par l’OTAN: le bombardement de la Yougoslavie en 1999 et une frappe aérienne près de Kunduz en Afghanistan réalisée en septembre 2009. Les jugements reposent sur deux formes de « technicalités juridiques ». La première est relative à la définition de limites juridictionnelles qui excluent l’espace aérien repris par les bombardiers et le terrain sur lequel se trouvaient les victimes lorsqu’elles furent tuées. La seconde est, quant à elle, reliée aux régimes visuels particuliers ayant permis d’interpréter la présence de personnes sur le terrain comme n’étant pas des civils.

Keywords

international humanitarian lawciviliansarmed conflictjurisdictionvisualityvisibilitytechnologiesdroit international humanitairecivilconflits armésjuridictionvisualitévisibilitétechnologies
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 34 , Special Issue 2: Vers une déstabilisation du sensorium du droit: Étude de la jurisprudence des sens / Troubling Law’s Sensorium: Explorations in Sensational Jurisprudence , August 2019 , pp. 261 - 280
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association / Association Canadienne Droit et Société 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Prior versions have been presented at the Law and Society Association Conference in Toronto as well as the Greifswald University Political Theory Research Colloquium. The author would like to thank the engaged audiences at both events as well as the editors and anonymous reviewers for the Canadian Journal of Law and Society for their comments and suggestions. Research for this article was supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (Canada) grant “Law and the Regulation of the Senses: Explorations in Sensori-Legal Studies.” Special thanks to Safiyah Rochelle for reading and commenting on a draft and to Michael Rothberg for facilitating extraterritorial PDF access.

References

1 See Zehfuss, Maja, War & the Politics of Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).Google Scholar

2 See Crawford, Neta, Accountability for Killing: Moral Responsibility for Collateral Damage in America’s Post-9/11 Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Dill, Janina, Legitimate Targets? Social Construction, International Law and US Bombing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015);Google Scholar Amnesty International, “‘Collateral Damage’ or Unlawful Killings? Violations of the Laws of War by NATO during Operation Allied Force,” <https://amnesty.no/natofederal-republic-yugoslaviacollateral-damage-or-unlawful-killings> (accessed 25 February 2019);+(accessed+25+February+2019);>Google Scholar Human Rights Watch, “The Crisis in Kosovo,” <https://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/nato/Natbm200-01.htm> (accessed 25 February 2019);+(accessed+25+February+2019);>Google Scholar United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan Reports on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict <https://unama.unmissions.org/protection-of-civilians-reports> (accessed 25 February 2019).

3 See: ICTY, Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee Established to Review the NATO Bombing Campaign Against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, released 6 June 2000 <http://www.icty.org/x/file/Press/nato061300.pdf> (accessed 23 May 2018); European Court of Human Rights, Banković v. Belgium (admissibility), Application No. 52207/99, 12 December 2001; Generalbundesanwalt am Bundesgerichtshof, Einstellungsvermerk im Ermittlungsverfahren gegen Oberst Klein und Hauptfeldwebel W., 3 BJs 6/10-4 (offene Version), 16 April 2010; Verwaltungsgericht Köln, Judgment, 9 February 2012, Az. 26 K 5534/10 ≤https://openjur.de/u/453623.html> (accessed 6 July 2018) [VG Köln]; Landgericht Bonn, Judgment, 11 December 2013, Az. 1 O 460/11 <http://openjur.de/u/667409.html> (accessed 1 June 2018); Oberlandesgericht Köln, Judgment, 30 April 2015, Az. 7 U 4/14 <http://openjur.de/u/854919.html> (accessed 1 June 2018) [OLG Köln]; Bundesgerichtshof, Judgment, 6 October 2016, III ZR 140/15 [BGH].

4 See Henn, Elisabeth, “The Development of German Jurisprudence on Individual Compensation for Victims of Armed Conflict,” Journal of International Criminal Justice 12 (2014): 625.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 On the many opposites of legality in international law, see Johns, Fleur, Non-Legality in International Law: Unruly law (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013).Google Scholar

6 On the ICTY, see Laursen, Andreas, “NATO, the War over Kosovo, and the ICTY Investigation,” American University International Law Review 17 (2002): 765–814;Google Scholar Fenrick, W. J., “Targeting and Proportionality during the NATO Bombing Campaign against Yugoslavia,” European Journal of International Law 12 (2001);Google Scholar Benvenuti, Paolo, “The ICTY Prosecutor and the Review of the NATO Bombing Campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia,” European Journal of International Law 12 (2001): 503–29;CrossRefGoogle Scholar on Banković, see Happold, Matthew, “Banković v. Belgium and the Territorial Scope of the European Convention on Human Rights,” Human Rights Law Review 3 (2003): 77–90;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Rüth, Alexandra and Trilsch, Mirja, “Banković v. Belgium (Admissibility), App. No. 52207/99,” American Journal of International Law 97 (2003): 168–72;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Roxstrom, Erik, Gibney, Mark, and Einarsen, Terje, “The NATO Bombing Case (Banković et al. v. Belgium et al.) and the Limits of Western Human Rights Protection,” Boston University International Law Journal 23 (2005), 55–136;Google Scholar on Kunduz, see Fischer-Lescano, Andreas and Kommer, Steffen, “Entschädigung für Kollateralschäden? Rechtsfragen anlässlich des Luftangriffs bei Kunduz im September 2009,” Archiv des Völkerrechts 50 (2010): 156–90;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Kolanoski, Martina, “Undoing the Legal Capacities of a Military Object: A Case Study on the (In)Visibility of Civilians,” Law & Social Inquiry 42 (2017): 377–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Valverde, Mariana, “Jurisdiction and Scale: Legal ‘Technicalities’ as Resources for Theory,” Social & Legal Studies 18 (2009): 139–57;CrossRefGoogle Scholar also see Sylvestre, Marie-Eve, et al., “Spatial Tactics in Criminal Courts and the Politics of Legal Technicalities,” Antipode 47 (2015): 1346–66;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Riles, Annelise, “A New Agenda for the Cultural Study of Law: Taking on the Technicalities,” Buffalo Law Review 53 (2005): 973–1033.Google Scholar

8 Valverde, “Jurisdiction and Scale,” 144.

9 See Valverde, “Jurisdiction and Scale.”

10 Weizman, Eyal, Forensic Architecture: Violence at the Threshold of Detectability (New York: Zone, 2018), 31.Google Scholar

11 European Court of Human Rights, Al-Skeini v. United Kingdom, application 55721/07 (7 July 2011) (affirming the jurisdiction of the European Convention on Human Rights for UK military violence committed in Iraq in 2003).

12 Weizman, Forensic Architecture, 31

13 See Safiyah Rochelle, “Encountering the Muslim,” in this volume.

14 Weizman, Forensic Architecture, 33.

15 ECtHR, Banković v. Belgium, para 80.

16 Feldman, Allen, “On Cultural Anesthesia: From Desert Storm to Rodney King,” American Ethnologist 21 (1994): 405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 In the litigation for civil compensation for the Kunduz airstrike (see below), the trial court and appellate court affirmed jurisdiction. Only the Supreme Court denied it. As a result, the substance of the claims has been publicly adjudicated. In the Banković case, in contrast, the European Court of Human Rights denied jurisdiction and therefore did not discuss any other dimensions of the claims brought forward.

18 See Wilcox, Lauren, Bodies of Violence: Theorizing Embodied Subjects in International Relations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 On “seeing as,” see Vertesi, Janet, Seeing Like a Rover: How Robots, Teams, and Images Craft Knowledge of Mars (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Coulter, Jeff and Parsons, E. D., “The Praxeology of Perception: Visual orientations and practical actions,” Inquiry 33 (1990): 269;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Watson, Patrick G., “The Documentary Method of [Video] Interpretation: A paradoxical verdict in a police-involved shooting and its consequences for understanding crime on camera,” Human Studies 41 (2018): 121–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 On seeing and concepts, see Sharrock, Wes and Coulter, Jeff, “On What We Can See,” Theory & Psychology 8 (1998): 147–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Pugliese, Joseph, “Asymmetries of Terror: Visual regimes of racial profiling and the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in the context of the war on Iraq,” Borderlands 5 (2006), para 7 <www.borderlands.net.au./vol5no1_2006/pugliese.htm> (accessed 21 February 2019).Google Scholar

22 Wilcox, Bodies of Violence, 145.

23 Adey, Peter, Whitehead, Mark, and Williams, Alison, “Introduction: Visual Culture and Verticality,” in From Above: War, violence, verticality , ed. Adey, , Whitehead, , and Williams, (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 1–18.Google Scholar

24 See Saint-Amour, Paul K., “Photomosaics: Mapping the front, mapping the city,” in From Above: War, violence, and verticality , ed. Adey, , Whitehead, , and Williams, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 121.Google Scholar

25 See Vertesi, Janet, “Drawing As: Distinctions and disambiguation in digital images of Mars,” in Representation in Scientific Practice Revisited, ed. Coopmans, Catelijne, Vertesi, Janet, Lynch, Michael, and Woolgar, Steve (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014), 15–35;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Johns, Fleur, “Data, Detection, and the Redistribution of the Sensible in International Law,” American Journal of International Law 111 (2017): 57–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 See Goodwin, Charles, “Professional Vision,” American Anthropologist 96 (1994): 606–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 Butler, Judith, “Endangered/Endangering: Schematic racism and white paranoia,” in The Judith Butler Reader , ed. Salih, Sarah (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 206.Google Scholar

28 Bishop, Ryan, “Project Transparent Earth and the Autoscopy of Aerial Targeting,” in From Above: War, violence, and verticality , ed. Adey, , Whitehead, , and Williams, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 191.Google Scholar

29 See Derek Gregory, “From a View to a Kill.”

30 Sharrock and Coulter, “On What We can See,” 161.

31 Sharrock and Coulter, “On What We can See,” 157.

32 Coulter and Parsons, “The Praxeology of Perception,” 269; also see Watson, “The Documentary Method”; Vertesi, Seeing Like a Rover.

33 Vertesi, Seeing Like a Rover, 79.

34 See Vertesi, Seeing Like a Rover; Goodwin, “Professional Vision”; Sharrock and Coulter, “On What We can See”; Coulter and Parsons, “The Praxeology of Perception.”

35 Mair, Michael, Elsey, Chris, Smith, Paul V., and Watson, Patrick G., “War on Video: Combat footage, vernacular video analysis and military culture from within,” Ethnographic Studies 15 (2018): 84.Google Scholar

36 Nishizaka, Aug, “Seeing What One Sees: Perception, emotion, and activity,” Mind, Culture, and Activity 7 (2000): 114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 Vertesi, Seeing Like a Rover, 16.

38 Vertesi, Seeing Like a Rover, 98.

39 Nishizaka, “Seeing What One Sees,” 106.

40 Nishizaka, “Seeing What One Sees,” 106.

41 See Mair et al., “War on Video”; Watson, “The Documentary Method.”

42 Goodwin, “Professional Vision,” 606.

43 Butler, “Endangered/Endangering,” 206.

44 Feldman, “On Cultural Anaesthesia,” 412.

45 Feldman, “On Cultural Anaesthesia,” 410.

46 Pugliese, “Asymmetries of Terror,” para 7.

47 Safiyah Rochelle, “Encountering the Muslim: Guantanamo Bay detainees and the apprehension of violence,” Canadian Journal of Law and Society 34 (2019): 209-225.

48 Pugliese, “Asymmetries of Terror,” para 8.

49 Weizman, Forensic Architecture, 20.

50 See Kinsella, Helen, The Image Before the Weapon: A Critical History of the Distinction between Combatant and Civilian (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Garbett, Claire, The Concept of the Civilian: Legal recognition, adjudication and the trials of international criminal justice (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015).Google Scholar

51 See Wilke, Christiane, “How International Law Learned to Love the Bomb: Civilians and the regulation of aerial warfare in the 1920s,” Australian Feminist Law Journal 44 (2018): 29–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

52 Butler, “Endangered/Endangering,” 205.

53 ICTY, Final Report, para 54. Also see Amnesty International, “NATO/Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: ‘Collateral Damage’ or Unlawful Killings? Violations of the Laws of War by NATO during Operation Allied Force,” 5 June 2000, Index number: EUR 70/018/2000 <https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/140000/eur700182000en.pdf> (accessed 23 May 2018), 1.

54 ICTY Statute, Art. 1 <http://www.icty.org/x/file/Legal%20Library/Statute/statute_sept09_en.pdf> (accessed 6 July 2018).

55 ICTY, Final Report, para 2.

56 ICTY, Final Report.

57 ICTY, Final Report, para 57.

58 ICTY, Final Report, para 58.

59 Whether the NATO practice of targeting bridges was in conformity with IHL is debated in the literature. See, for example, W. J. Fenrick, “Targeting and Proportionality,” 497; Benvenuti, “ICTY Prosecutor,” 520.

60 ICTY, Final Report, para 59.

61 ICTY, Final Report, para 61

62 NATO Headquarters Brussels, Press Conference with General Wesley Clark, 13 April 1999 <https://www.nato.int/kosovo/press/p990413a.htm> (accessed 5 July 2018).

63 Benvenuti, “ICTY Prosecutor,” 520.

64 “NATO missile video ‘no distortion,’” BBC, 7 January 2000 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/594800.stm> (accessed 5 July 2018). The speed with which video evidence of state violence should be replayed for viewing and interpretation in the courtroom has been the subject of dispute in a range of other cases. See Feldman, “On Cultural Anesthesia,” 411.

65 ICTY, Final Report, para 62.

66 ICTY, Final Report, para 63.

67 ICTY, Final Report, para 64.

68 “NATO Confirms ‘Mistakenly’ Bombing Civilians in Convoy,” CNN, 15 April 1999 <http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9904/15/nato.attack.02/> (accessed 5 July 2018).

69 ICTY, Final Report, para 69.

70 ICTY, Final Report, para 86.

71 ICTY, Final Report, para 86.

72 ICTY, Final Report, para 88.

73 Manyon, Julian and Sylvester, Rachel, “Village Attack Was Justified, Says NATO,” The Independent, 16 May 1999 <https://www.independent.co.uk/news/village-attack-was-justified-says-nato-1093802.html> (accessed 5 July 2018).Google Scholar

74 ICTY, Final Report, para 88.

75 Manyon and Sylvester, “Village Attack Was Justified.”

76 ICTY, Final Report, para 89.

77 See Fenrick, “Targeting and Proportionality,” 501.

78 ICTY, Final Report, para 56.

79 Banković and others v. Belgium and 16 other Contracting States (Admissibility), Application no. 52207/99, 12 December 2001.

80 ICTY, Final Report, para 71.

81 ICTY, Final Report, para 76.

82 See Fenrick, “Targeting and Proportionality,” 495–96; Benvenuti, “ICTY Prosecutor,” 523.

83 ICTY, Final Report, para 77.

84 ECtHR, Banković v. Belgium.

85 ECtHR, Loizidou v. Turkey, Judgment (18 December 1996), Application no. 15318/8, para 56.

86 ECtHR, Banković v. Belgium, para 46.

87 ECtHR, Banković v. Belgium, para 46.

88 ECtHR, Banković v. Belgium, para 47.

89 ECtHR, Banković v. Belgium, para 52.

90 ECtHR, Banković v. Belgium, para 36.

91 ECtHR, Banković v. Belgium, para 43.

92 ECtHR, Banković v. Belgium, para 44.

93 ECtHR, Banković v. Belgium, para 59.

94 ECtHR, Banković v. Belgium, para 67.

95 ECtHR, Banković v. Belgium, para 71.

96 ECtHR, Banković v. Belgium, para 74.

97 ECtHR, Banković v. Belgium, para 80.

98 Roxstrom, Gibney, and Einarsen, “The NATO Bombing Case”; Happold, “Banković v. Belgium.” On this logic, also see Mann, Itamar, Humanity at Sea (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

99 Valverde, “Jurisdiction and Scale,” 145.

100 Happold, “Banković v. Belgium,” 88.

101 See Valverde, Mariana, Chronotopes of Law: Jurisdiction, scale, and governance (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Manderson, Desmond, “Chronotopes in the scopic regime of sovereignty,” Visual Studies 32 (2017): 167.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

102 Roxstrom, Gibney, and Einarsen, “The NATO Bombing Case,” 62.

103 See Deutscher Bundestag, 17, Wahlperiode, 2011, Bericht des Verteidigungsausschusses, 25 October 2011. Document #17/7400. Accessed April 20, 2017 <http://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/17/074/1707400.pdf> (accessed 5 July 2018). For a fuller analysis of the case, see Fischer-Lescano and Kommer, “Entschädigung.”

104 Generalbundesanwalt, Einstellungsvermerk.

105 VG Köln, Judgment.

106 Landgericht Bonn, Judgment, 11 December 2013, Az. 1 O 460/11 [LG Bonn]; OLG Köln; BGH.

107 Generalbundesanwalt, Einstellungsvermerk.

108 BGH, III ZR 140/15, para 30.

109 BGH, III ZR 140/15, para 36.

110 BGH, III ZR 140/15, para 42.

111 Valverde, “Jurisdiction and Scale,” 145.

112 BGH, III ZR 140/15, para 59.

113 For a more detailed analysis of the case and investigations into the facts, see Wilke, Christiane, “Seeing and Unmaking Civilians in Afghanistan: Visual technologies and contested professional visions,” Science, Technology, & Human Values 2017, Vol. 42(6): 1031–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

114 Generalbundesanwalt, Einstellungsvermerk, 14.

115 Generalbundesanwalt, Einstellungsvermerk, 20.

116 Wilke, “Seeing and Unmaking Civilians”; also Henn, “German Jurisprudence”; Parsa, “Knowing and Seeing the Combatant. War, Counterinsurgency and Targeting in International Law” (PhD Thesis, Lund University, 2017). <http://lup.lub.lu.se/record/37176180-94d0-4df0-9c05-64615d17d6c5>

117 See Henn, “Development”; Fischer-Lescano and Kommer, “Entschädigung.”

118 See Fischer-Lescano and Kommer, “Entschädigung,” 159.

119 Generalbundesanwalt, Einstellungsvermerk, 29.

120 Kolanoski, “Undoing the Legal Capacities.”

121 The video is available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/DfrErSvy7U8 (accessed 22 February 2019).

122 Kolanoski, “Undoing the Legal Capacities,” 378.

123 Eyal Weizman, “Violence at the Threshold of Detectability,” e-flux Journal #64 (2015): 1–14, 5. <http://worker01.e-flux.com/pdf/article_8998134.pdf>

124 LG, Bonn, Az. 1 O 460/11, para 71.

125 Kolanoski, “Undoing the Legal Capacities,” 392.

126 Kolanoski, “Undoing the Legal Capacities,” 387.

127 OLG Köln, Az. 7 U 4/14, para 78.

128 Pugliese, “Asymmetries of Terror,” para 8.

129 Butler, “Endangered/Endangering,” 205.

130 BGH III ZR 140/15, para 52.

131 Generalbundesanwalt, Einstellungsvermerk, 33.

132 Fischer-Lescano and Kommer, “Entschädigung,” 166.

133 Kolanoski, “Undoing the Legal Capacity,” 382.

134 Coward, Martin, “Networks, Nodes, and De-Territorialised Battlespace: The scopic regime of rapid dominance,” in From Above: War, Violence, and Verticality , ed. Adey, , Whitehead, , and Williams, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 117.Google Scholar

135 See Clarke, Kamari, Affective Justice (Duke University Press, forthcoming).Google Scholar

136 Mann, Itamar, “Maritime Legal Black Holes: Migration and rightlessness in international law,” European Journal of International Law 29 (2018): 348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Mann excludes the context of war, but it could be argued that only deaths of combatants, but not non-combatants should be exceptions from the problem of rightlessness.

137 Mann, “Maritime Black Holes,” 2.

138 See Johns, Non-Legality in International Law.

139 Valverde, “Jurisdiction and Scale,” 144.