Muslims hold placards to protest against the US assassination of top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Iraq, during a demonstration in New Delhi on January 12, 2020. (Photo by AFP)
A conclusion by the United Nations (UN) that the USs assassination of Iranian commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani was "unlawful" has drawn Washingtons ire.
On Wednesday, US State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus called the report in which the UNs top investigator of extrajudicial killings made the conclusion about the assassination of General Soleimani "tendentious and tedious."
"It takes a special kind of intellectual dishonesty to issue a report condemning the United States for acting in self-defense," Ortagus said, repeating a debunked US claim that it assassinated the Iranian general "in self-defense."
The assassination of General Soleimani, who was the commander of the Quds Force of Irans Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), was carried out with a US drone strike in Baghdad on January 3.
The Iranian general, and a top Iraqi commander who was also killed in the strike, enjoyed deep reverence among Muslim nations because of their endeavors in eliminating the Daesh terrorist group in the region, particularly in Iraq and Syria.
US President Donald Trump ordered the assassination.
Agnes Callamard, the UNs special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, concluded in a report on Tuesday that the assassination was in breach of international law.
Callamard stressed that the targeted killing "violated the UN Charter" and said her report would be presented to the UN Human Rights Council session in Geneva on Thursday.
The US withdrew from the council in 2018.
Ortagus, the spokeswoman for the US State Department, said the report "proves once again why America was right to leave the council."
Callamard said in her report that the assassination was the first known incident in which a country invoked "self-defense" as a justification for an attack against a public figure in the territory of a third country. And she said General Soleimani posed no threat to the lives of other people.
In response to the assassination, the IRGC fired volleys of ballistic missiles at a US airbase in Iraq on January 8. While Trump denied that the attack had caused any casualties, the US Defense Department said in an updated toll that at least 109 American soldiers received traumatic brain injuries in the attack.
After the assassination, Iraqi lawmakers approved a bill demanding the withdrawal of all foreign military forces from their country.
Iran has also issued an arrest warrant and asked Interpol for help in detaining the US president and several other US military and political leaders who were behind the assassination.
SOURCE: PRESS TV
LINK: https://www.ansarpress.com/english/19119
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