A representative of the United Nations claimed that that U.S. killing of an Iranian terror commander who oversaw the murder of thousands was probably against the law.
French national Agnès Callamard, who serves both as United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial Executions and as a professor at Columbia University, claimed that the U.S. probably broke the law when it carried out a drone strike eliminating Iranian general Qassem Soleimani along with several Iraqi military figures.
According to a tweet posted by Callamard in the wake of Soleiman’s assassination, “The targeted killings of Qasem Soleiman and Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis are most likely unlawful and violate international human rights law. Outside the context of active hostilities, the use of drones or other means for targeted killing is almost never likely to be legal.”
Callamard continued, “To be justified under international human rights law, intentionally lethal or potentially lethal force can only be used where strictly necessary to protect against an imminent threat to life.”
Following Soleimani’s killing, U.S. President Donald Trump commented to the media that the Iranian general was the “world’s number one terrorist.”
Soleimani served as commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Quds Forces, which oversees some of the most brutal terror groups in the world, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
In addition to being designated as a terrorist by the U.S. government, Soleimani was instrumental in propping up the regime of Syrian butcher Bashar Assad, who has presided over a civil war in which close to half a million of his own people have been killed.
The terror proxies Soleimani directed are widely seen as the primary forces destabilizing the Middle East.
