On the third anniversary of the martyrdom of General Qassem Soleimani, Ali Bahreini in a letter to Volker Türk, High commissioner of the Office of the United Nations in Geneva, requested to use every tool at his disposal to prevent this arbitrary assassination from going unpunished.
Considering the assassination of Martyr Soleimani as an international crime and illegal act that threatened international peace and security, Bahreini stated that it is the duty of international mechanisms, especially human rights mechanisms, to pursue it.
It is also said in the letter that the role of the US government and the personal responsibility in this crime on those who were complicit in it is clear.
Bahreini, in the letter, considered the silence and indifference of international institutions regarding that international crime as the reason behind the normalization and the repetition of such crimes by the violaters at the international level.
Agnes Callamard, who was previously the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council, described the assassination of Lt. Gen. Soleimani by US forces in violation of international law.
She noted the assassination was illegal, arbitrary, and in violation of international laws, adding that the use of drones or other means for targeted killing is almost never likely to be legal.
On January 3, 2020, a US drone strike near Baghdad International Airport assassinated General Soleimani, former commander of the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps. The attack -- that also martyred Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) anti-terror group, along with several others of their companions-- came while General Soleimani was on an official visit to the Iraqi capital.
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