PUTRAJAYA, Jan 7 — The US drone strike that killed Iran’s top military official Qasem Soleimani was no different than the suspected murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi that Saudi Arabia is accused of committing, Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said today.
Decrying both incidents, he tarred the two countries as immoral for engaging in unlawful cross-border killings.
He also said Muslim nations must come together to reject such acts.
“Khashoggi was killed across boundaries. This is also another act, where one country decides on its own to kill the leader of another country, in another place. So, both are guilty of well, immoral act,” he said in a press conference at his office here.
The prime minister was responding to requests for comments about US President Donald Trump’s decision to order Soleimani’s killing in Baghdad, Iraq.
A prominent critic of the House of Saud, Khashoggi disappeared after he went to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, to renew his passport on October 28, 2018.
Although his death was never confirmed, Turkish intelligence was able to capture surveillance footage that suggest he was likely murdered by a Saudi death squad linked to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.
Dr Mahathir went on to say that such extra-territorial killings showed that no world leader, including himself, was safe if powerful nations could decide to undertake such killings unilaterally.
“It is against the law, but we are no longer safe now. If anybody insults or says something that somebody doesn’t like, it is alright for that person from another country, to send a drone and perhaps have a shot at me,” Dr Mahathir said.
Qasem was one of 10 individuals killed as he departed from his plane at the Baghdad International Airport, where he had just arrived from either Lebanon or Syria.
Largely considered a national hero in his homeland, Qasem was alternately held by the US government to be a terrorist who assisted Iran’s allies in their attacks on American troops based in the Middle East.
Earlier today, a coalition of Islamic NGOs formally submitted a memorandum to the United States’ embassy here, to protest its assassination of Qasem with a drone strike in Iraq last Friday.
Around 12 members of the Malaysia Muslim Watch (MMW) gathered just outside the embassy along Jalan Tun Razak from 10am onwards, before MMW spokesman Datuk Mahmud Abdullah and several others were permitted to approach the embassy’s main entrance.
Under the careful observation of 15 police officers posted outside the embassy, Mahmud met a representative of the US Department of State who received the memorandum.
Several of them, including Mahmud, later made their way to the Iranian Embassy along Lorong U-Thant 1, to offer their condolences over Qasem’s death.
