TEHRAN – President Ebrahim Raisi has called for an expeditious pursuance of Washington’s 2020 assassination of senior anti-terror commanders, Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.
In a meeting with head of the Supreme Judicial Council in Iraq Faeq Zaidan here, Raisi said no time should be wasted in consigning the perpetrators of the atrocity to justice.
“Pursuing the case to the end will show that Iran and Iraq stop at nothing in their bid to enable administration of justice” towards those behind the assassinations, the president said.
Raisi said Iraq’s resolve to address the Americans’ “appalling” foul play and its efforts to consign those who had ordered, advised, and committed the atrocity, was clear to the Islamic Republic.
General Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), and their companions were assassinated in a US drone strike authorized by former U.S. President Donald Trump near Baghdad International Airport on January 3, 2020.
Both commanders were highly revered across the Middle East because of their key role in fighting the Daesh terrorist group in the region, particularly in Iraq and Syria.
For his part, the Iraqi official said the endeavor towards trial of those, who had partaken in the “terrorist crime,” was one of the most important examples of Tehran and Baghdad’s judicial cooperation.