GENEVA — A United Nations expert investigating summary executions said on Thursday that the United States’ targeted killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani of Iran was unlawful and risked eroding international laws that govern the conduct of hostilities. Agnes Callamard, the United Nations special rapporteur investigating extrajudicial and summary executions, said that the American drone strike that killed General Suleimani as he arrived in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, in January could only be justified in international law as a response to an imminent threat. The United States had provided no evidence to support that position, she said. “Absent an actual imminent threat to life, the course of action taken by the U.S. was unlawful,” Ms. Callamard wrote in a report that she presented on Thursday to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. The retaliatory missile attacks Iran launched against American bases in Iraq five days later were also “completely outside the scope of what is permissible” in international law, Ms. Callamard said.

Source: International New York Times July 09, 2020 20:03 UTC