U.N. envoy to probe deadly force by U.S.

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NEW YORK — The U.N. specialist on illegal executions plans to probe the use of deadly force by U.S. troops and military contractors in Iraq when he visits the United States next spring.

Asked whether he also planned to visit Iraq to look into ethnic cleansing and militia killings there, human rights rapporteur Philip Alston said he saw no point because his movements would be too severely restricted by security concerns.

Mr. Alston said he plans to investigate whether U.S. military and criminal justice systems are properly trying soldiers who kill Iraqis and Afghans in U.S. custody.

He said he also was concerned by contractors' use of force in Iraq, where several investigations are under way into charges that employees of Blackwater USA and other companies have fired indiscriminately, killing innocent civilians. The contractors are largely protected from Iraqi laws and none have been tried in U.S. courts.

"That's clearly an issue which I would want to look at insofar as executions are involved, and obviously in the Blackwater case recently, they are," Mr. Alston said on Friday, after briefing the U.N. General Assembly's committee on human rights.

Mr. Alston, an Australian national, said his request to visit had been affirmed by American authorities, but he had not yet set up a schedule of places to visit or people to see.

The U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, as Mr. Alston is known, is more likely to investigate honor killings, mass executions or black-masked death squads than it is uniformed government soldiers.

Nonetheless, a U.S. representative at the Friday meeting of the so-called Third Committee, which deals with economic, social and human rights issues, said the Bush administration welcomes Mr. Alston's visit. The representative, Leaksmy Norin, noted that assigning responsibility in an armed conflict could be legally complex.

Human rights experts previously have visited the United States to investigate inconsistencies in the use of the death penalty, the treatment of women in prison and freedom of religion, among other issues.

Although he reports to the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, Mr. Alston — who also serves as the director of the New York University Center for Human Rights and Global Justice — stressed last week that he sets his own agenda and chooses which countries he would like to visit.

Mr. Alston said he had not yet been granted permission to visit many of the 25 countries that concern him, including Human Rights Council members Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and India.

This is an "abdication of responsibility," he said, by countries that have sworn to abide by the rules of the U.N. Charter and HRC as a condition of serving on it. He also complained to delegates that he is not getting support from either the General Assembly or the Human Rights Council in attempting to make country visits.

"The majority of governments are failing the basic test of accountability," the rapporteur told the world body, saying the impunity with which countries can snub him made his work "a mockery."

Mr. Alston said he has tried unsuccessfully to visit Iran many times because of concern about the number of people executed in recent years, and the "barbaric" use of stoning.

The rapporteur said Iran has executed 173 persons this year, largely for sexual conduct deemed inappropriate. Although Iran has laws against homosexuality and adultery, Mr. Alston said, these transgressions may not fit the internationally accepted standards of "serious crimes" that could warrant capital punishment.