Bush gives CIA hit list of senior terrorists

The Bush administration has drawn up a hit list of more than two dozen terrorist leaders whom the President has authorised the CIA to assassinate, it was revealed yesterday.

The previously undisclosed list includes Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, along with other senior al-Qa'ida leaders and operatives belonging to groups linked to the network. The CIA does not need to seek further presidential approval for launching hits on anyone on the list, having already received written authorisation.

The hit list is part of America's broadening campaign against international terrorism, launched in the aftermath of the attacks of 11 September 2001 in New York and Washington. Shortly after the attacks, Mr Bush issued a "presidential finding" giving the CIA the right under US law to capture or kill terrorist leaders. This authorisation was initially used in the effort to track down al-Qa'ida leaders in Afghanistan.

But with the bulk of the remaining al-Qa'ida forces in Afghanistan in hiding or on the run, the United States has increasingly been focusing its anti-terror efforts elsewhere – particularly around the Horn of Africa, where the US is slowly building a presence in Djibouti.

The CIA is understood to have used Djibouti as a base from which to launch an unmanned Predator drone equipped with Hellfire missiles to kill the senior al-Qa'ida operative, Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi – believed to have been on the list – in northern Yemen last month. Harethi is alleged to have played a role in the bombing of the USS Cole in Aden in 2000, in which 17 US sailors died.

The Bush administration's specific criteria for including individuals on the list were unclear. "It's the worst of the worst," an intelligence official told The New York Times.

About 20 al-Qa'ida suspects are named on the FBI's publicly available most wanted list. Officials said the CIA had been working with the FBI, the Pentagon and various foreign governments to identify senior terrorists. They added that the intelligence community would rather capture the terrorists alive to enable interrogation.

Military sources have said that Yemeni authorities had sustained casualties during attempts to arrest Harethi.

The assassination of foreign leaders or civilians is prohibited by a law first introduced by President Gerald Ford in an executive order in 1976. The order came after public concern that the CIA had become a "rogue elephant" in its effort to win the Cold War.

But officials said the al- Qa'ida terrorists are not protected by Mr Ford's order because they are classified as "enemy combatants". Some officials said the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, would also be a legitimate target because he is a military commander.

Earlier this year the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld – frustrated that efforts to track down al-Qa'ida figures had stalled – reportedly ordered special operations commanders to come up with new ways in which the élite forces could be used to "disrupt and destroy" enemy assets.