Iraq issues arrest warrant for Trump over Soleimani killing

An bench warrant was issued weekday for outgoing President Donald Trump in reference to the killing of associate Iranian general and a strong Iraqi militia leader last year, Iraq’s judiciary said.

The warrant was issued by a choose in Baghdad’s inquiring court tasked with searching the Washington-directed drone strike that killed Gen. Qassim Soleimani and Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, the court’s media workplace said. They were killed outside the capital’s airfield last January.

Al-Muhandis was the deputy leader of the state-sanctioned fashionable Mobilization Forces, an umbrella cluster composed of an array of militias, together with Iran-backed groups, shaped to fight Daesh.

Soleimani headed the military Quds force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. The bench warrant was for a charge of intended murder, that carries the corporal punishment on conviction. it’s unlikely to be dispensed however symbolic within the waning days of Trump’s presidency.

The call to issue the warrant “was created when the choose recorded the statements of the claimants from the family of Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis,” per a press release from the Supreme Judicial Council. The investigation into the killings is ongoing, the court said.

The killings sparked a diplomatic crisis and strained US-Iraq ties, drawing the ire of Shiite Muslim political lawmakers who passed a non-binding resolution to pressure the govt to oust foreign troops from the country.

Iran-backed teams have since stepped up attacks against the yank presence in Iraq, resulting in threats by Washington to shutter its national capital diplomatic mission.