U.S. Blasts UN Rights Rapporteur’s Determination that U.S. Killing Of Iran’s Gen. Soleimani was ‘Unlawful’
U.S. Blasts UN Expert’s Conclusion That Strike On Iran General Was Unlawful RFE/RL
The United States has accused a UN expert of “giving a pass to terrorists” after she concluded that a U.S. drone strike that killed top Iranian General Qasem Soleimani and nine other people in Iraq early this year was “unlawful.”
Agnes Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, presented her findings on July 9 to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
In a report released earlier this week, Callamard said the United States had provided no specific evidence that showed Soleimani was planning an imminent attack against U.S. interests, particularly in Iraq, for which immediate action was necessary and would have been justified.
Therefore, the January 3 U.S. drone strike near Baghdad’s airport in which Soleimani was killed constituted an “arbitrary killing” for which the United States is responsible under international human rights law, she wrote.
“It takes a special kind of intellectual dishonesty to issue a report condemning the United States for acting in self-defense while whitewashing General Soleimani’s notorious past as one of the world’s deadliest terrorists,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said on July 8.
“This tendentious and tedious report undermines human rights by giving a pass to terrorists and it proves once again why America was right to leave” the Human Rights Council in 2018, Ortagus said.
In retaliation for the assassination of Soleimani, who headed the Quds force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), an Iranian ballistic-missile strike on January 8 targeted U.S. bases in Iraq housing U.S. forces, leaving some 110 U.S. troops suffering from traumatic brain injuries.
According to Callamard, Iran’s retaliatory strikes were also unlawful.
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump justified Soleimani’s killing by saying he was responsible for orchestrating attacks on U.S. forces for years and in the process of planning further attacks on Americans and U.S. allies in the region.
Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the leader of the Iran-backed Kataeb Hizballah militia and deputy head of Iraq’s state-sanctioned Popular Mobilization Units, was also killed in the January strike that targeted Soleimani.
Kataeb Hizballah and affiliated Iran-backed militia have been linked to multiple rocket attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, including one in late December that killed a U.S. defense contractor and wounded several U.S. and Iraqi soldiers at a military base in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk.
As the head of the Quds force, Soleimani was a key figure in supplying weapons and explosive devices to Iraqi insurgents that killed or wounded U.S. soldiers in Iraq following the ouster of Saddam Hussein. He was also the main figure running Iran’s policy in Syria and support for the Lebanese militant group Hizballah.
3 July Report
UN Special Report of the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions (targeted killings through armed drones and the case of Iranian General Quassem Soleimani) finds that the killing of Iran’s Gen. Soleimani in January ‘Unlawful.’
“By killing General Soleimani on Iraqi soil without first obtaining Iraq’s consent, the US violated the territorial integrity of Iraq.
“(b) The justifications advanced by the US (and then later by Iran) in defense of its January 8 actions, include no evidence that threats were imminent (US) and indeed make no reference to them (Iran). Both States focus instead on past incidents. To the extent that evidence points to the US and Iranian strikes being retaliations or reprisals, each would be unlawful under jus ad bellum.
The report criticizes the uptick in the use of drones.:
“The myth of the surgical strike
“Military officials and others have argued that drones enable the most surgical of strikes; that a drone’s capability for remaining on persistent over watch offers clear military advantages; that their greater endurance enhances detailed situational intelligence; and that with heightened accuracy comes far fewer collateral casualties. But these assertions are not all supported by evidence. Far more casualties are attributable to drone strikes than acknowledged.
“The intelligence gathering and complex coordination required across teams, agencies and countries, diffusion of controls over visuals, and other factors increase the risks of inaccuracy in use, if not actual misuse, of drone technology. In practice, the potential for human error and thus imperfect instruction of the drone is far higher than usually acknowledged.
“A major problem exists at the point of identification of the targets of so-called personality or signature strikes. The former may be based on intelligence gathered from various State agencies regarding specific individuals. The later, immensely problematic, are derived from defining characteristics associated with “terrorists” (e.g. bomb-making or carrying weapons) with indications that metadata, such as gender and age come into play. Both are reliant on often complex networks of informers and analysts and each is commonly convoluted and speculative. Mistakes are inevitable.
“Further, even when a drone (eventually) strikes its intended target, accurately and “successfully”, the evidence shows that frequently many more people die, sometimes because of multiple strikes. Those casualties may well amount to violations of international humanitarian and/or human rights law. Civilian deaths and drones’ operations also alienate local populations, further reducing willingness to provide intelligence and generating grievances that can feed further conflict.
“Analysis of classified data on U.S. drone strikes in Afghanistan from 2010 to 2011 reveals that drone strikes had been ten times more likely to cause civilian casualties than conventional air attacks. FULL REPORT HERE WITH BACKGROUND BELOW:
Statement by the Department of Defense JAN. 2, 2020 DOD announcement
At the direction of the President, the U.S. military has taken decisive defensive action to protect U.S. personnel abroad by killing Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.
General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region. General Soleimani and his Quds Force were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more. He had orchestrated attacks on coalition bases in Iraq over the last several months – including the attack on December 27th – culminating in the death and wounding of additional American and Iraqi personnel. General Soleimani also approved the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad that took place this week.
This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans. The United States will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world.
PREVIOUS REPORTS:
Iraqi TV and three Iraqi officials said Friday that Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, has been killed in an airstrike at Baghdad’s international airport. Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces was also killed AP reported.
‘The American and Israeli enemy is responsible for killing the mujahideen Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and Qassem Soleimani,’ spokesperson for Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces says, Reuters with AP reported via Hareetz Israeli news.
Six others following a US airstrike at Baghdad’s international airport. Iraqi officials and the state television reported that aside from Soleimani, Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was also killed in the attack.
Ahmed al-Assadi, a spokesman for Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) umbrella grouping of Iran-backed militias, also confirmed the deaths of Soleimani and Muhandis, Al Jazeera confirmed the reports.