A United Nations report concluded that President Trump violated international law by staging a drone strike on an airport in Baghdad that killed the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force, Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
At the time of the Jan. 8 attack – carried out without the knowledge or consent of Congress or U.S. allies in the region – Trump claimed the ambush was necessary to avoid an imminent threat posed by Iran on U.S. interests. The U.N. said these vague claims were likely exaggerated and unsupported by evidence.
“No evidence has been provided that Gen. Soleimani specifically was planning an imminent attack against U.S. interests, particularly in Iraq, for which immediate action was necessary and would have been justified,” Agnes Callamard, U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary execution, said in her report submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Council on Monday.
Although America claimed self-defense, the U.N. argued that “by killing Gen. Soleimani on Iraqi soil without first obtaining Iraq’s consent, the U.S. violated the territorial integrity of Iraq.”
The drone strike violated article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter, which “prohibits the threat or use of force and calls on all members to respect the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of other states,” the agency said.
The U.N. council is scheduled to convene on Thursday to discuss the findings of the report, but the scope of their authority is limited in condemning the U.S., which is no longer a member of the council. – READ MORE
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