Amnesty: Trump comments amount to ‘threat to commit genocide’

The US and Iran last night agreed to a conditional two-week ceasefire, brokered by Pakistan just ahead of a deadline after which Trump said “a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again”.

Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, said Trump’s threat “reveals a staggering level of cruelty and disregard for human life” and followed “explicit threats to directly attack civilian infrastructure”.

In a statement, Ms Callamard said: “International humanitarian law strictly prohibits direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects.

“The US president’s threat of extermination and irreparable destruction brazenly shreds core rules of international humanitarian law, with potentially catastrophic consequences for over 90 million people.

“It may constitute a threat to commit genocide, a crime defined by the Genocide Convention and by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as committing one or more defined acts ‘with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such’.”

She urged the international community to “unequivocally affirm that inciting, ordering or committing war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide entail individual criminal responsibility under international law”.