Extra-judicial killings

An extrajudicial killing (also known as extrajudicial execution) is the killing of a person by governmental authorities without the sanction of any judicial proceeding or legal process. Extrajudicial punishments are mostly seen by humanity to be unethical, since they bypass the due process of the legal jurisdiction in which they occur. Extrajudicial killings often target leading political, trade union, dissident, religious, and social figures and are only those carried out by the state government or other state authorities like the armed forces or police, as extra-legal fulfillment of their prescribed role. This does not include cases where aforementioned authorities act under motives that serve their own interests and not the State's, such as to eliminate their complicity in crime or commissioning by an outside party.

Section 3(a) of the United States Torture Victim Protection Act contains a definition of extrajudicial killing:

a deliberate killing not authorized by a previous judgement pronounced by a regular constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples. Such term, however, does not include any such killing that, under international law, is lawfully carried out under the authority of a foreign nation.

Extrajudicial killings and death squads are common in Syria,Iraq, Egypt, Central America, India, Mexico,Colombia, Brazil,Venezuela, Indonesia,Afghanistan,Pakistan,Bangladesh, several nations or regions in Africa,Democratic Republic of the Congo,Burundi,Jamaica, Kosovo, allegedly Russia,Uzbekistan, parts of Thailand,Turkey, in the Philippines, Tajikistan,Papua New Guinea, and by Israeli forces. One of the most recent issues regarding extrajudicial killing has been the debate about the legal and moral status of targeted killing by unmanned aerial vehicles by the United States.

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