Benjamin B. Ferencz, a former lawyer and Nuremberg war crimes prosecutor, has said that the United States’ assassination of Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani is a clear violation of national and international law.

“The administration recently announced that, on orders of the president, the United States had “taken out” (which really means “murdered”) an important military leader of a country with which we were not at war. As a Harvard Law School graduate who has written extensively on the subject, I view such immoral acts as a clear violation of national and international law,” Ferencz wrote in a letter to The New York Times on Wednesday.

Ferencz, 99, who was a lawyer who helped prosecute Nazi leaders at the post-World War II Nuremberg trials, said, “The public is entitled to know the truth. The United Nations Charter, the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice in The Hague are all being bypassed. In this cyberspace world, young people everywhere are in mortal danger unless we change the hearts and minds of those who seem to prefer war to law.”

General Soleimani was assassinated in a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad on January 3.

He was a legendary commander in leading the resistance movement against terrorist groups, especially Daesh, in both Syria and Iraq.

NA/PA