\n<\/p>\n
A top Democratic lawmaker with a military background has reacted strongly to US defense secretary Pete Hegseth\u2019s call for \u201cno quarter\u201d for US enemies during a Friday press briefing at the Pentagon, calling such an order \u2013 if followed by troops \u2013 a potential violation of international law.<\/p>\n
The US senator Mark Kelly, of Arizona, posted on Friday on X that \u201c\u2018No quarter\u2019 isn\u2019t some wanna be tough guy line \u2013 it means something. An order to give no quarter would mean to take no prisoners and kill them instead.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kelly added: \u201cThat would violate the law of armed conflict. It would be an illegal order. It would also put American service members at greater risk. Pete Hegseth should know better than to throw around terms like this.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to a transcript of the briefing, Hegseth said: \u201cWe will keep pressing, keep pushing, keep advancing \u2013 no quarter, no mercy for our enemy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Critics of Hegseth say the phrase \u201cno quarter\u201d is more than a belligerent figure of speech, implying that enemy combatants will not be taken prisoner but instead executed. Under the Hague Convention of 1899, that is considered a war crime.<\/p>\n
An amendment to the convention, from 1907, states that \u201cit is especially forbidden \u2026 to declare that no quarter will be given\u201d.<\/p>\n
According to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), global \u201chumanitarian law prohibits the use of this procedure, that is, ordering that there shall be no survivors, threatening the adversary therewith, or conducting hostilities on this basis\u201d.<\/p>\n
The ICRC\u2019s International Humanitarian Law Databases says that under the statute of the international criminal court, \u201cdeclaring that no quarter will be given\u201d is a war crime in international armed conflicts.<\/p>\n
Hegseth\u2019s use of the phrase came amid a wide-ranging briefing during which he claimed Iran\u2019s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is wounded and likely disfigured. The defense secretary also questioned Khamenei\u2019s ability to govern.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know the new so-called not-so-supreme leader is wounded and likely disfigured,\u201d Hegseth said. \u201cHe put out a statement yesterday. A weak one, actually, but there was no voice and there was no video. It was a written statement.\u201d<\/p>\n
An Iranian official told Reuters on Wednesday that Khamenei\u2019s injuries were light. On Friday, Iran\u2019s ambassador to Japan, Peyman Saadat, said Khamenei had not been \u201cimpaired\u201d.<\/p>\n
Kelly\u2019s criticism of Hegseth\u2019s remark comes amid an ongoing war of words between the two veterans that has spilled into the courtroom.<\/p>\n
In November, Kelly and five other Democratic lawmakers appeared in a video in which they urged troops to disobey unlawful military directives from Donald Trump\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n
The president accused the lawmakers of sedition \u201cpunishable by DEATH\u201d in a social media post. And Hegseth called for Kelly\u2019s demotion from the senator\u2019s retired rank of captain.<\/p>\n
The Pentagon subsequently began investigating Kelly, citing a federal law that allows retired service members to be recalled to active duty on orders of the defense secretary for possible court-martial.<\/p>\n
But a judge ruled in February that he knew of no federal supreme court precedent to justify the Pentagon censuring of a US senator and appeared skeptical of arguments made by a government attorney, asking if they weren\u2019t \u201ca bit of a stretch\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A top Democratic lawmaker with a military background has reacted strongly to US defense secretary Pete Hegseth\u2019s call for \u201cno quarter\u201d for US enemies during a Friday press briefing at the Pentagon, calling such an order \u2013 if followed by troops \u2013 a potential violation of international law. The US senator Mark Kelly, of Arizona,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[634,5143,5357,11505,3632,3482,9310,3292,3116],"class_list":{"0":"post-46763","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-call","9":"tag-condemns","10":"tag-democratic","11":"tag-enemies","12":"tag-hegseth","13":"tag-hegseths","14":"tag-lawmaker","15":"tag-pete","16":"tag-quarter"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/46764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}