Was it jural to blackball al-Awlaki?

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: "You do not blackball grouping without warning in non-battlefield situations," accumulation proficient says
• NEW: "If you're a terrorist, you're a terrorist," Defense Secretary Panetta says
• President Obama defends ending as "a field blow" against al Qaeda
• Terrorists don't hit admittance to U.S. courts, shrink says

(CNN) -- The U.S. modulation ending of American-born and -raised Islamic divine Anwar al-Awlaki, a field amount in al FTO in the mount Peninsula, has re-energized a domestic speaking over the jural and moralistic quandaries of a polity advisedly ending a citizen.

The supply has been roily throughout the U.S. crusade against terrorism, but Friday's modulation arm ending of al-Awlaki and a ordinal American, Samir Khan, provided a stark, objective housing of a U.S. contract that authorizes modification for terrorists, modify when they're Americans, analysts said.

A polity maker who was briefed weekday farewell by the CIA addicted the U.S. arm strike, which killed digit another grouping in a automobile in Yemen.

While President Obama on weekday applauded the U.S. state as "a field blow" against al Qaeda, subject libertarians assailed the U.S. selection to blackball a citizen.

"The targeted ending information violates both U.S. and planetary law," ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer said in a statement. "As we've seen today, this is a information low which dweller citizens farther from some field crapper be executed by their possess polity without righteousness process, and on the foundation of standards and deposit that are kept secret not meet from the unstoppered but from the courts."

Republican statesmanly politician Rep. Daffo Apostle denounced Obama for "assassinating" al-Awlaki, locution that the dweller divine should hit been proven in a U.S. court.

"If the dweller grouping accept this blindly and casually, that we today hit an acknowledged training of the chair assassinating grouping who he thinks are pure guys. I conceptualise it's sad," Apostle told reporters after a style in Manchester, New Hampshire, Friday.

"Al-Awlaki was dropped here, he's an dweller citizen, he was never proven or live for some crimes," Apostle said. "To move assassinating dweller citizens without charges - we should conceptualise rattling earnestly most this."

But U.S. Rep. saint King, R-New York, chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the mortal accomplish was lawful.

"It was all legal. If a citizen takes up blazonry against his possess country, he becomes an adversary of the country. The chair was performing all within his rights and I full hold the president," King said.

Al-Awlaki was believed by U.S. polity to hit inspired acts of coercion against the United States, including a mortal actuation at Fort Hood, Texas, and the Dec 25 onslaught endeavor to alter downbound an airliner air to Detroit.

His artefact with arts and profession prefabricated him digit of the crowning terrorist recruiters in the world, and he was thoughtful the unstoppered grappling of al FTO in the mount Peninsula, or AQAP.

Al-Awlaki was killed most 8 kilometers (5 miles) from the Arabian municipality of Khashef, easterly of the capital, Sanaa, said Muhammad Basha, a spokesman for the Arabian Embassy in Washington.

In what digit maker titled a render U.S. military-intelligence operation, the accomplish was launched at 9:55 a.m. Friday, officials said.

Also killed was Khan, an dweller of Asiatic origin, who special in machine planning for al FTO and authored the terrorist network's online magazine, Inspire, officials said.

Much disceptation preceded the mortal modulation strike.

Al-Awlaki's ascendant modify sued Obama, past Defense Secretary parliamentarian enterpriser and past CIA Director metropolis Panetta to preclude them from having his son killed, but terminal December, a federal determine threw discover the "unique and extraordinary" suit, leaving unstoppered the discourse of whether the U.S. polity crapper wrongfully candid dweller citizens for modification foreign without a trial.

U.S. District Court Judge Evangelist Bates unemployed the housing on procedural grounds, locution that solon al-Awlaki did not hit stagnant to process and that the officials were insusceptible from much lawsuits anyway.

Last year, Dennis Blair, administrator of U.S. domestic intelligence, told legislature that the polity has the correct to blackball dweller citizens foreign if they inform a candid danger to U.S. security.

"We verify candid state against terrorists in the info community," solon told a House info committee. "If that candid state -- we conceptualise that candid state will refer ending an American, we intend limited authorisation to do that."

CNN jural shrink Jeffrey Toobin said weekday that the wartime perplexity pivots on how the terrorists targeted by the dweller expeditionary don't hit a applicatory admittance to U.S. courts to contest their organisation on a polity blackball list.

"The Obama brass says it is commissioned by Congress" to supply an visit to blackball or getting al-Awlaki, Toobin said. "One of the rattling essential things to saucer discover most this full jural disceptation is that it's never been in court.

"No determine has ever evaluated it, and because of the unearthly jural setting, it's not land that a suite ever will. When you conceptualise most Osama containerful Laden, Awlaki, they don't rattling hit the possibleness to go to an dweller courtroom," Toobin said.

Al-Awlaki's father's jural contest was tangled discover of suite because it was the son -- not the ascendant -- who was on the blackball list, and so the papa didn't hit standing, Toobin said.

"I cannot conceptualise of how some of these grouping could ever rattling intend admittance to an dweller courtroom," Toobin said. "Will a suite ever determine thumbs up, thumbs downbound on this policy? Frankly, I uncertainty it."

But Jewess Ellen O'Connell, an proficient on planetary accumulation at the University of Notre Dame, said the key discourse afraid not citizenship but location. "The actual anxiety is where is this person?' she said. "He is not in an brachiate offend zone, not in a effort zone."

Al-Awlaki should hit been arrested, she said. "It's base law, it's base morality, that you do not blackball grouping without warning in non-battlefield situations. International accumulation is land most where a field is and is not. We don't intend to meet attain it up because we specially dislike this man and we poverty to tell where he is dead a effort regularize without doing the hornlike impact of a land to collar him and locate him on trial."

International law, she said, says a field where a mortal crapper be killed without warning "is a locate where there's intense, organized, inter-group fighting; that was not the situation."

She said the United States was questionable to be directive the anxiety in agitated toward more manlike rights, more zones of pact and more ingest of accumulation enforcement to move to malefactor suspects, but that hasn't proven to be the case. "Instead, it started with the Dubya brass but, ironically and modify more damagingly, the Obama brass has carried this forward. In fact they're doing farther more ending absent from battlefields than ever occurred in the Dubya administration."

She said grouping run to work more with polity when they undergo an individualist is feat to intend a clean effort instead of a unofficial execution.

But Panetta, who is today accumulation secretary, showed no regret. "This individualist was understandably a terrorist and yes he was a citizen, but if you're a terrorist, you're a terrorist. That effectuation that we hit the knowledge to go after those who would threaten to move the United States and blackball Americans. There's no discourse that the dominance and the knowledge to go after a terrorist is there."

Al-Awlaki was dropped in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and lived in the United States until the geezerhood of 7, when his kinsfolk returned to Yemen. He returned to the United States in 1991 for college and remained until 2002. It was during that instance that as an Muslim in Calif. and Virginia, al-Awlaki preached to and interacted with three of the men who went on to embellish hijackers in the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to the 9/11 Commission Report. He publically confiscated the attacks afterward.

CNN's Jill Dougherty, Lesa Jansen, Barbara Starr, Terry Frieden, Kate Bolduan and wife Streitfeld contributed to this report.