TEHRAN – Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi has said that assassination of Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani was “an arbitrary killing” and a clear violation of the UN Charter.

The coward assassination of Gen. Soleimani, the anti-terrorism hero of our region, was “an arbitrary killing” & a clear violation of the UN charter. The US is responsible for this criminal act, & can’t whitewash this by chastising the UN. We’ll never forget, we’ll never forgive. pic.twitter.com/3oroPJxmY9

— S.A MOUSAVI (@SAMOUSAVI9) July 9, 2020

“The coward(ly) assassination of Gen. Soleimani, the anti-terrorism hero of our region, was “an arbitrary killing” & a clear violation of the UN charter. The US is responsible for this criminal act, & can’t whitewash this by chastising the UN. We’ll never forget, we’ll never forgive,” Mousavi tweeted on Thursday.
A UN human rights investigator said on Monday that the U.S. assassination of Soleimani “was unlawful and arbitrary under international law”.

The United States has failed to provide sufficient evidence of an ongoing or imminent attack against its interests to justify the strike on Soleimani’s convoy as it left Baghdad airport, said Agnes Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.

She noted that the assassination of Soleimani represented a “violation of the UN Charter”.

Callamard wrote in a report that the attack violated the UN Charter, calling for accountability for targeted killings by armed drones and for greater regulation of the weapons.

“The world is at a critical time, and possible tipping point, when it comes to the use of drones. ... The Security Council is missing in action; the international community, willingly or not, stands largely silent,” she told Reuters.

On January 3, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered drone strikes that killed General Soleimani, chief of the IRGC Quds Force, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), as well as eight other people.

“Major General Soleimani was in charge of Iran military strategy, and actions, in Syria and Iraq. But absent an actual imminent threat to life, the course of action taken by the U.S. was unlawful,” Callamard wrote in the report.

The January 3 drone strike was the first known incident in which a nation invoked self-defense as a justification for an attack against a state actor in the territory of a third country, Callamard added.

In the early hours of January 8, the IRGC attacked the U.S. airbase of Ain al-Assad in Anbar province in western Iraq as part of its promised “tough revenge” for the U.S. attack.

Tehran Prosecutor General Ali Alqasi-Mehr announced on June 29 that 36 individuals, including Donald Trump, have been identified in connection with the assassination and Interpol has been notified to arrest them.

“36 individuals who cooperated, collaborated, and participated in the assassination of Hajj Qassem, including political and military authorities of the U.S. and other countries, have been identified,” he stated.

The prosecutor general explained that Trump is at the top of the list, and he’ll be facing prosecution even after his term as president.

NA/PA