Groups Challenge Order to Kill Awlaki

Two civil rights groups filed a court challenge Tuesday saying the U.S. government illegally placed Yemeni-American Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki on a hit list and froze his assets.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights said in their petition that they are not even allowed to represent Awlaki because he has been named a "specially designated global terrorist" by the U.S. Treasury Department.

The U.S. government in July said Awlaki was a key leader of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, placing him on its list of terrorism supporters, freezing his financial assets and banning any transactions with him.

Back in April, a U.S. official said President Obama's administration had authorized the targeted killing of Awlaki, after American intelligence agencies concluded the cleric was directly involved in anti-U.S. plots.

Awlaki, now based in Yemen, rose to prominence last year after he was linked a U.S. Army major who shot dead 13 people in Fort Hood, Texas, and to a Nigerian student accused of trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight on Dec. 25.

The petition filed in federal court in Washington alleges that the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control has refused to grant a license that would allow the groups to file a lawsuit challenging the government's use of lethal force.

It said the groups want to challenge "the government's asserted authority to use lethal force against U.S. citizens located far from any battlefield without charge, trial or judicial process of any kind."

The two organizations said they were retained in early July by Nasser al-Awlaki, the cleric's father, to bring a lawsuit over the alleged kill order from the CIA and the Defense Department.

"How does the government determine whether to put Americans on a kill list?" said Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU.

"The government is targeting an American citizen for death without any legal process whatsoever, while at the same time impeding lawyers from challenging that death sentence and the government's sweeping claim of authority to issue it," he said.

"This is a dual blow to some of our most precious liberties, and such an alarming denial of rights in any one case endangers the rights of all Americans. Attorneys shouldn't have to ask the government for permission in order to challenge the constitutionality of the government's conduct."

CCR's executive director Vince Warren said the U.S. government "is going outside the law to create an ever-larger global war zone and turn the whole world into a battlefield. Would we tolerate it if China or France secretly decided to execute their enemies inside the U.S.?"

The White House pushed back strongly against the accusations that the government was trampling on civil liberties.

"Let's be clear about Anwar al-Awlaki," spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

Awlaki "is someone who has sworn allegiance to Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, is a regional commander for that group in Yemen, has and continues to direct attacks there and, as we know, against innocent men, women and children in this country," Gibbs told reporters.

"And this president will take the steps necessary to keep our country safe from thugs like him."