GENEVA (Dispatches) -- Iran’s ambassador to the UN office in Geneva says the U.S. assassination of top Iranian commander General Qassem Soleimani clearly amounts to “state terrorism”.
Addressing the 47th session of the United Nations’ Human Rights Council here Thursday, Esmaeil Baghaei Hamaneh warned the UN against any understatement of the atrocity committed by the U.S.
The Iranian ambassador was addressing a report last year by Agnes Callamard, the UN special rapporteur, about the assassination, that insufficiently characterized the terrorist act as “arbitrary killing.”
The Iranian diplomat called the designation a mere understatement of the terrorist crime that failed to depict the enormity of the “unjust, illegal, and barbaric murder.”
Callamard’s description, he said, should not lead to any underestimation of the gravity of “this act of state terrorism.”
General Soleimani, the former commander the Quds Force, was martyred together with his companions in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020.
The attack ordered by former U.S. president Donald Trump came while General Soleimani was paying an official visit to the Iraqi capital.
Among the others martyred in the terrorist act was senior Iraqi counterterrorism commander, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.
Baghaei Hamaneh described General Soleimani as a “true defender of the human rights as well as an opponent of occupation and Daesh’s terrorism.”
His assassination, the ambassador said, was an international crime that came to threaten the international peace and security too.”
The culpability of the U.S. administration, including those who were involved in the assassination, is clear to see, the diplomat said.

“The Iranian people, who know Soleimani as a model soldier, and the entire people of the region, who consider their liberation from the scourge of Daesh owed to his sacrifice, will never stop demanding justice for this tremendous crime,” he added.
The world’s human rights organizations are expected to pay heed to the sheer scope of the crime and its lasting repercussions for the rule of law as well as the humanity’s rights and dignity, Baghaei Hamaneh said.
They have to realize the full extent of this “clear example of lawlessness and insult against the basic right to life,” he added.