(MintPress) — Several Iranian families filed a lawsuit this week accusing the U.S., the U.K. and Israel of assassinating their relatives, all of whom were nuclear scientists killed in targeted assassinations over the past two years. The families, along with Iranian government officials, claim the five assassinations were designed to hinder the development of the Iranian nuclear program, a project that officials claim is for peaceful purposes.
Although the families have yet to announce how they will carry out this action, legal experts surmise that they may bring their case before an international tribunal, citing U.N. resolutions banning targeted killings and political assassination.
Israeli officials maintain that any Iranian nuclear project, peaceful or otherwise, is unacceptable. The Obama administration, however, has taken a more moderate position, agreeing to allow Iranian nuclear enrichment below weapons grade of 20 percent while insisting that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors be allowed to enter the more than 100 nuclear enrichment facilities located throughout the country.
Targeted assassinations
The collective legal action is in response to a string of five assassinations targeting Iranian nuclear scientists over the past two years. Although the defendants in the case — Israel, the U.S. and the U.K. — have not responded to the allegations, officials in Iran and throughout the Middle East suspected collusion by Western intelligence services in the murders.
Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan was killed in a covert attack on January 2010 when two unidentified assailants traveling on motorcyles reportedly attached a bomb beneath the car of the 32-year-old nuclear scientist.
Roshan was the deputy director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, one of the largest known nuclear facilities in Iran.
Shortly after his death, Iranian students staged a protest decrying the assassination and calling on the government for immediate action.
Additionally, approximately 1,300 Iranian University students changed their majors to nuclear physics and nuclear engineering, a move heralded by Tehran in public statements.
“Three hundred talented students at Sharif University and about a thousand brilliant students at the country’s universities have applied in recent days to change their major and start studying nuclear physics and nuclear engineering,” said Kamran Daneshjo, Iranian Minister of Science Research and Technology in a January statement.
Mansoureh Karami, the wife of slain Tehran University physics professor Masoud Ali Mohammadi offered a public statement regarding the recent legal action, saying:
“Through this complaint, we declare to the world that actions of arrogant governments, led by the U.S., Britain and the occupying Zionist regime, in assassinating nuclear scientists and elites is against human principles.”
The Israeli Mossad intelligence agency has also been credited with launching the Stutnex computer virus which shut down Iranian nuclear facilities briefly in 2010.
International law
The families filing the lawsuit have not publicly explained how they will carry out this legal action. However, some legal experts believe that an International tribunal, possibly at the Hague, is the likely venue for recourse.
Political assassinations are a contested area of international law. The legal action will likely reference the “Principles of International Law recognized in the Charter of the Nüremberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal,” a document drafted in 1950 banning crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
According to the charter, “Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connexion with any crime against peace or any war crime.”