World in 'new dark age' of abuse: UN rights expert

Ben Saul, the United Nations' special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, said the war in the Middle East would not improve global security.

"We have entered a new dark age of abuses in the name of countering terrorism," he told a press conference in Geneva.

"Recently, it has excused naked aggression and renewed imperialism against Iran and Venezuela, raining death and violating the right to life and making the world less safe."

On February 28, the US and Israel launched the first wave of attacks in a war that has seen Iran strike targets in multiple countries around the Gulf.

Saul slammed the UN Security Council for passing a resolution on Wednesday "which failed to condemn Israeli and US aggression, contrary to international law, and instead condemned the excessive and unlawful response only of Iran".

Among other justifications, US President Donald Trump has said the Middle East war is about ensuring that "the world's number-one sponsor of terror" can never obtain a nuclear weapon.

"Nobody knows how this is going to end and when we look at the last series of US-led interventions -- Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan -- these were all disasters," said Saul.

"It's a recipe for further destabilisation, possible insurgency, fragmentation politically within Iran, in the region; destabilisation of neighbours through refugee flows."

He added: "It's very disturbing that at the moment you're seeing states kind of all over the map sympathising with these attacks, not calling it as illegal, or calling it as illegal but then saying we support the US anyway."
Silence 'emboldens bullies'
Special rapporteurs are independent experts mandated by the UN Human Rights Council to report their findings. They do not, therefore, speak for the UN itself.

Iran's attacks on its Gulf neighbours since February 28 "are clearly illegal under international law: they're not mounting aggression against Iran; they can't be attacked in response", said Saul.

As for Venezuela and "the declaration of a new phoney war on narco-terrorism", Saul said the US had extra-judicially killed 151 civilians on the high seas, which "is utterly illegal under international law".

He said few countries had spoken out against the attacks because they were afraid of US retribution.

"But the more the international community remains silent... the more it emboldens bullies like the United States and Israel."

Saul wants countries to urgently adopt an international definition of terrorism to protect human rights from terrorism and excessive state responses to it.

He said vague and overbroad definitions had led to countless rights violations, with the abuse of counter-terror laws becoming the tool of choice to suppress critics.