Iran Judiciary Official: US Assassination of General Soleimani Violated Numerous Legal Standards

The court session took place on Monday in the First Branch of the Criminal Court, presided over by Judge Gholamreza Javaheri, with the presence of advisors Morteza Tourak and Ebrahim Torabi Golsefid, Ismail Khalifeh, the representative of the prosecutor, defense attorneys for the defendants, and the heirs of the martyrs at the Imam Khomeini Judicial Complex in Tehran Province.During this session, Ismail Khalifeh, the prosecutor's representative, stated that the United States, through the assassination of Martyr General Qassem Soleimani, has violated numerous international legal standards, and there is no similar instance of the assassination of high-ranking military officials in other countries.The Iranian judicial official added that, according to US military and intelligence officials, General Soleimani had been targeted for assassination multiple times by American military and intelligence forces.The Iranian prosecutor's representative referred to the financial support of terrorist groups by the US for carrying out targeted assassinations, stating that according to the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, this action constitutes a crime of financing terrorism.By the judge's order, the continuation of the case proceedings was postponed to the next session.
Martyr Qassem Soleimani was assassinated in the early hours of January 3, 2020, in a drone strike by the US military, ordered by then-US President Donald Trump, at Baghdad International Airport. In this terrorist act, several others, including Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces, were also martyred.