TEHRAN (Dispatches) – Iranian Foreign Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif said Wednesday the case of assassination of top Iranian commander General Qassem Soleimani and his companions in Baghdad is only within the competence of Iranian and Iraqi tribunals to handle.
"The venue for any legal action on the assassination of Martyr Soleimani and his companions is the judicial courts of Iran and Iraq,” Zarif said in a meeting of organizers of a conference on the legal and international lawsuits relating to the Sacred Defense –a war that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein launched on Iran in the 1980s.
Zarif touched on his ministry efforts that resulted in the UN special rapporteur’s condemnation of the American assassination.
In July 2020, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Agnes Callamard, said in a report that the U.S. drone strike in Iraq that martyred General Soleimani constituted a violation of international law.
The U.S. assassinated General Soleimani along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy head of Iraq’s Hashd al-Shaabi, and their companions outside Baghdad airport on January 3, 2020.
The act of terror was carried out under the direction of U.S. President Donald Trump, with the Pentagon taking responsibility for the drone strike.