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hello and welcome to the law fair podcast I'm Benjamin with us today in a special edition

of the podcast. Ridicca Singh and I interview Ben Emerson the UN special

reporter on human rights and counterterrorism. Emerson has been conducting an investigation

of drone strikes and recently issued a lengthy statement on his meetings with

Pakistani officials. Our wide-ranging discussion covered questions of Pakistani

consent to drone strikes, the transatlantic gulf over the question of what legal

paradigm governs the conflict with al-Qaeda and Emerson's own change of thinking

on that subject so I'd like to start just with an overview of the investigation

it was announced you know some months ago with a statement where are you in it and

what are you looking at well we're obviously a significant way down the line but

with a significant way further to go we are really pursuing two quite separate

tracks the first is discussions with governments and with national security

advisors within governments both about the development of drone programs and

the proliferation of drone technology and about the fundamental differences

that there are between states and their legal advisors on the basic rules

...