‘Iran to take legal action against any country, govt. complicit in Soleimani’s assassination’

An Iranian official says the Islamic Republic will sue any country or government involved in the US assassination of Iran’s anti-terror commander General Qassem Soleimani.

Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, who heads the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s Special Committee for legal and international follow-up of the assassination case of martyr General Hajj Qassem Soleimani, made the remarks on Monday.

Answering a question on whether Iran possesses documents that prove the involvement of European nationals in the crime, Kadkhodaei said that there are related signs that Tehran is examining.

“We will sue any country or government that has been involved in the case,” if we obtain enough documents, he said.

In addition to people from some European nations, Kadkhodaei said people from Iraq as well as a number of neighboring countries also helped the US to carry out the assassination as the operation was “very complicated.”

The official also said that a petition in the case is “almost finished.”

Noting that five Iranians were martyred in the US attack in Baghdad, he said that Iran can sue the perpetrators of the crime in Iranian courts based on the Islamic Republic’s laws.

Kadkhodaei further said that a trial will begin as soon as the indictment is finished.

“Very good documents regarding the perpetrators of the assassination have been presented to the prosecutor’s office”, he said, noting that Iraqi officials helped Iran to collect evidence.

Kadkhodaei also referred to a report by a UN expert that said the US drone attack represented a violation of international law, saying the report represents a “strong evidence” in the international forums.

Back in 2020, Agnes Callamard, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said the killing of Soleimani was “unlawful,” noting that the US has failed to provide evidence of an imminent attack against its interests to justify the attack.

General Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), and his Iraqi trenchmate Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), were martyred along with their companions in a US drone strike on January 3, 2020.

The strike near Baghdad International Airport was authorized by then-President Donald Trump.

The two noted anti-terror commanders were tremendously respected and admired across the region for their instrumental role in fighting and decimating the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in the region, particularly in Iraq and Syria.

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