One Year After Plane Downed, Victims' Governments Demand Justice from Iran

Canada and other nations whose citizens died in Iran's downing of a Ukrainian jetliner one year ago on Friday called on Tehran to come clean about the tragedy and "deliver justice" for the victims' families.

"We urgently call on Iran to provide a complete and thorough explanation of the events and decisions that led to this appalling plane crash," the coordination and response group made up of Canada, Britain, Ukraine, Sweden and Afghanistan said in a statement.

They also said they "will hold Iran to account to deliver justice and make sure Iran makes full reparations to the families of the victims and affected countries."

In Toronto, in Canada's Ontario province, nearly 200 people gathered under cloudy skies Friday afternoon in front of the University of Toronto before holding a march in honor of the crash victims, according to an AFP photographer at the scene.

Many people carried signs depicting the victims' photos and names. Other people wore black face masks printed with the word "Justice."

Among the marchers was Hamid Niazi, who lost his wife, daughter and son in the crash.

"I am not sure how I can explain that, I am still in (a) state of denial and disbelief. I can't believe that that happened to my family," he told AFP.

"Sometimes I think I am having a nightmare, that this couldn't happen."

In Kiev, where the doomed plane was bound, wreaths of flowers were laid on the site of a future memorial dedicated to the victims. A giant screen showed photos of the passengers and crew members.

'Thorough, Transparent and Credible Investigation'

At the end of December, Iran offered to pay US$150,000 to each of the families of the victims of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, acknowledging that its forces had mistakenly shot it down on January 8, 2020, killing all 176 people on board, including 85 Canadian citizens and permanent residents.

On Thursday, Canadian Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne rejected the offer, saying: "The issue of compensation will not be set through unilateral statements by Iran but rather be subject to state-to-state negotiations."

In a separate statement on Friday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau once again demanded from Iran a "thorough, transparent and credible investigation into the cause of this tragedy."

He also vowed "to hold Iran accountable, including by ensuring that Iran makes full reparations for the victims of PS752 and their grieving families, and to ensure that those responsible are brought to justice."

In mid-December, Canada's special counsel into the tragedy, former minister Ralph Goodale, issued a 70-page report arguing that Iran should not be "investigating itself" over the matter, emphasizing that many of the key details surrounding the crash remained unknown.

Trudeau, Champagne and several other members of the government spoke with victims' families on Thursday during a private virtual commemoration.

The prime minister also recently announced that January 8 would become known as Canada's National Day of Remembrance for Victims of Air Disasters.

Photo: IRNA

Iran Vows to Reveal 'Detailed' Data on Plane Probe: Kiev

Ukraine said on Wednesday that Iran promised to reveal "detailed" information on the probe into a Kiev-bound passenger plane mistakenly shot down in January, after a fresh round of talks in Tehran.

Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 crashed shortly after taking off from the Iranian capital's main airport on January 8. 

The Islamic republic admitted days later that its forces accidentally shot down the plane, killing all 176 people on board, after firing two missiles amid heightened US-Iran tensions.

After a second round of talks between Iran and Ukraine in Tehran, the parties reached an agreement that within a week Kiev "will receive detailed information on the investigation" conducted by Iran, said a statement from the office of Ukraine's attorney general.

The information to be provided will include "documentary evidence of the detention of six people who are suspected of shooting down the plane," it added.

It said that, by the end of October, Iran has also promised to send to Ukraine a key piece of evidence -- the flight deck of the crew which was found in the first days after the disaster.

Gunduz Mamedov, Ukraine's deputy attorney general, vowed in the statement that Kiev would not accept Iran withholding any information on the grounds it was a "state secret".

Iran's civil aviation authority has said the misalignment of an air defence unit's radar system was the key "human error" that led to the plane's downing.

On Tuesday, Iranian state news agency IRNA quoted country's deputy foreign minister, Mohsen Baharvand, as saying that discussions were "good and constructive", and Iran is looking for "fair" solutions.

The first round of negotiations were held in Kiev in July, with the Ukrainian authorities saying they were "cautiously optimistic" about the process.

The talks are aimed at determining the precise chain of events and, ultimately, the amount of compensation that should be paid by Tehran.

Canada, which lost 55 nationals and 30 permanent residents in the crash, is watching the talks closely.

Ottawa in August said it was demanding answers from Iran after Tehran's "limited" initial report failed to explain why it fired missiles at the plane.

Photo: IRNA

Iran Agrees to Hand Over Downed Jet's Black Boxes to Ukraine

Iran pledged Wednesday at a meeting of UN civil aviation agency to hand over black boxes from downed Flight 752 to Ukraine or France for analysis—a move welcomed by Canada and Ukraine.

Iran's representative at the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal, Farhad Parvaresh, said the devices would be sent to Kiev, sources confirmed to AFP.

They are expected to contain information about the last moments before the Ukraine International Airlines jetliner was struck by a missile and crashed shortly after taking off from the Tehran airport on January 8.

In Ottawa, Canadian Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne "welcomed" Iran's commitment to finally share the black boxes, saying this was "a step in the right direction by Iran."

"I take Iran at their word," he said, "but I would rather judge their actions once the black boxes are in Europe and we have our own experts who have been able to analyze (them)."

Ukraine's ambassador to Canada, Andriy Schevchenko, in a tweet said his country also "welcomes Iran's decision" to hand them over, adding that "if additional expertise is needed," the flight data recorders would be forwarded to France for analysis.

Iran has admitted that the two black boxes were damaged and that it lacked the technical ability to extract data from them, but for two months it has waffled about what to do with them.

Countries whose citizens died in the disaster -- which included mostly Iranians but also Afghans, Britons, Canadians, Swedes and Ukrainians -- had criticised Iran's refusal to hand the plane's black boxes to Ukraine or one of the few countries capable of recovering and analysing the data they contain.

Canada repeatedly asked Iran to hand the plane's black boxes over to Ukraine or France for expert analysis.

At the ICAO meeting, Canadian Transportation Minister Marc Garneau stepped up the pressure, saying: "We cannot learn from the tragic shoot-down of PS752 unless all the facts are known and analysed.

"Two months after the fact, we should all be increasingly concerned with Iran's failure to arrange for the readout of the flight recorders despite repeated requests," he said, according to his speaking notes.

"Iran must act now to arrange the readout of the flight recorders as a demonstration of continued willingness to provide a full and transparent account of this event that is consistent with their international obligations. Canadians and the international community simply cannot wait any longer."

The ICAO also pressed the Islamic republic "to conduct the accident investigation in a timely manner" in compliance with international accident investigation provisions.

The disaster unfolded as Iran's defences were on high alert in case the US retaliated to Iranian strikes hours earlier on American troops stationed in Iraq -- which were themselves in response to the US assassination of a top Iranian commander.

In the immediate aftermath, Iranian civilian authorities insisted the crash was likely caused by a technical malfunction, vehemently denying claims the plane was shot down.

But in the early hours of January 11, the Iranian military admitted that the plane was shot down due to "human error," killing 176 people.

Photo: IRNA

A Mother’s Pain Bares the Rifts Tearing Iran Apart

By Golnar Motevalli

When Hassan Rouhani was elected president of Iran in 2013, supporters pinned their hopes on him to revive the country’s fortunes and rehabilitate its relationship with the rest of the world.

For retired teacher Manzar Zarabi, that hope crumbled into more insecurity, economic stagnation—and then unspeakable loss with the shooting down of an airplane that killed four close members of her family.

As Iranians vote in parliamentary elections this weekend, Zarabi’s story is a tragic reminder of how the country has alienated the very people who swept Rouhani to power seven years ago.

Rather than spearheading a new era, the educated, aspirational class that backs reform and global engagement remains caught in conflicts—both geopolitical and between state institutions at home. The destruction of the Ukrainian passenger jet full of Iranians by their own military last month provided the brutal denouement. 

Zarabi just wanted the best for her children. She and her husband voted for Rouhani hoping for an end to the sanctions and escalating tension with the U.S. that were strangling the country. But the respite was short lived. 

Last year, in the face of worsening economic conditions, the return of U.S. sanctions and a business environment overrun with cronyism, her 29-year-old son and youngest child, Alvand Sadeghi, gave up trying to start his own company and decided to depart for Canada. Her daughter, Sahand Sadeghi, 38, had already moved there several years earlier and started a family with her husband. Daughter Sophie Emami was born in 2014.

“They only left because of the economic pressures, otherwise they loved this country,” Zarabi, 64, said in an interview from Tehran as the 40 day memorial of their deaths approached. “Alvand left with tears in his eyes, he had to tear himself away. The economic situation had a big impact on his life, he just couldn’t sort out a proper life for himself here.”

Just like Sahand before him, Alvand sold his small, Iranian-assembled Peugeot 206 car and with some help from his parents started a new life in Toronto with his wife, Negar Borghei, who embarked on a master’s degree at McGill University. He was hired by an engineering firm and earned a good salary, his mother said.

The night before the four of them were due to head to the airport in Tehran, Zarabi said she was relieved that they were all leaving Iran. The country appeared to be on the brink of direct conflict with the Americans after they killed General Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s most revered military commander, in early January in a targeted hit in Iraq.  

“When I saw that night that there was an attack and there could be a war, I just wanted them to leave the country sooner, to be safer,” Zarabi said.

Alvand, Negar, Sahand and five-year-old Sophie were killed within minutes of taking off from Imam Khomeini International Airport when two Iranian missiles hit their plane after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps mistook it for a cruise missile. All 176 people on board lost their lives. Hours earlier, Iran had started its retaliatory operation on U.S. bases in Iraq.   

The disaster seemed to crystallize the fortunes of the middle class, the traditional constituency of the reformist and moderate factions of Iran’s tightly controlled political sphere. Many have even less reason to engage now as hundreds of reformist candidates have been barred from standing in Friday’s election.

For the past two years in particular, as tensions with Washington worsened, educated Iranians feel increasingly adrift from the political institutions that govern their lives and financially crushed by U.S. sanctions and President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” strategy.  

“We’ve reached a historic peak in the division between society and the state,” Saeed Laylaz, an economist who was adviser to former reformist president Mohammad Khatami said. “It’s definitely growing, unfortunately, and I haven’t seen it as bad as this in the past 40 years.”   

Authorities covered up their culpability for the missile strike for three days. Rouhani said he didn’t know the truth until the afternoon of Friday, Jan. 10, suggesting that the highest level of government had been kept in the dark by its own military.

Iran is still investigating the incident, but that’s been fraught. The Ukrainian government has repeatedly called on Tehran to release the plane’s flight recorders to a country that has the technology to decode their data. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif  said this week his country won’t let the black boxes leave Iran and be decoded without the presence of Islamic Republic envoys.

“Hate and disgust,” Zarabi described her feelings immediately after learning what happened. “The lies on top of lies and a complete indifference to them having been actual human beings.”

U.S. sanctions have left few people in Iran unscathed. The collapse of the currency, the rial, by more than two thirds and the return of double-digit inflation mean only the country’s elites and industries protected by the state have been buffered from the worst effects of the downturn.

The impact on the squeezed middle is most keenly felt in a decline in living standards and spending power. The pressure is also hurting the value of their retirement incomes and the ability of their children to find jobs.  

About 4 million people who used to be in the middle class according to the standard of $11 purchasing power parity are no longer there, according to calculations by Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, professor of economics at Virginia Tech.

Zarabi and her family all voted for Rouhani and they fully supported the Iran nuclear deal. While she sees the U.S. as the primary cause of the regional insecurity that culminated in her children’s deaths, she says the men in charge of Iran’s government and armed forces are directly to blame for what happened, and she wants full accountability.

For the first time in the Islamic Republic’s history, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s most powerful institution, appeared before parliament to apologize and express his grief and regret over the incident.

But within days, hard-core supporters of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the guards were invited onto panel shows to argue that the plane’s downing wasn’t a big deal and that it was tantamount to a jet flying into a mountain. Clips circulated on Twitter and Instagram caused outrage.

Iran’s state media have interviewed or profiled some families who lost loved ones on the Ukrainian International Airlines plane. All of them were either devout or have expressed strong support for Khamenei.

The news cycle has continued to be dominated by coverage of Soleimani’s revenge operation and tributes to his military talents and religious devotion. No resignations have so far been announced over the plane tragedy, but the judiciary said last month that an unspecified number of people had been arrested.  

A week after the disaster, Rouhani called for national unity, asking the judiciary to establish a special court to investigate. Striking a different tone two days later, Khamenei questioned whether those who protested the attack on the jet were the real people of Iran, or whether those who turned out in their millions to mourn Soleimani were more representative.

“The middle class is now between a government that has become increasingly more repressive and a U.S. that has become increasingly more aggressive,” said Ali Vaez, senior analyst and director of the Iran Project at the Washington-based International Crisis Group.

Two weeks after the tragedy, Zarabi received a call that four suitcases, belonging to her children, grandchild and daughter-in-law, would be delivered to her. The luggage was intact and unscathed, the neatly organized effects of a family life that no longer exists. The pilot had decided to offload some cargo because the plane was too heavy, Ukraine’s foreign minister said.

Zarabi’s days are now about finding reasons to keep going. Her husband speaks of ending his life. She hopes that she can summon the energy to find purpose again. “Our lives ended that day,” she said. “Nothing has any meaning for us anymore.”

Photo: IRNA

Iran Makes Arrests Over Jet Disaster and Vows Full Investigation

By Golnar Motevalli and Abeer Abu Omar

Iran said it’s arrested a number of people linked to the Jan. 8 downing of a Ukrainian passenger jet, and the country’s president called on the judiciary to form a special court and fully investigate the disaster.

Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday that while U.S. policies toward the Islamic Republic were the root cause of the mistake, that didn’t excuse Iranian officials from confronting their own responsibility in the disaster. All 176 people on board were killed when Iranian defense units fired at the plane, bringing it down shortly after take-off from Tehran.

“I promise that the government, with all its ability and using everything at its disposal, will investigate this matter,” Rouhani told officials in remarks broadcast live on state TV. “This is not an ordinary case. The entire world will be watching.”

Iran is under intense international pressure to provide full accountability over the circumstances that caused the crash of the Ukrainian International Airlines plane. The country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which led a strike on U.S. bases in Iraq hours earlier, said it had mistaken the aircraft for a cruise missile.

Iranian officials at first fiercely denied that Iran was to blame, provoking outrage and protests in Iran once they accepted culpability. Security forces clashed with thousands of protesters over the weekend and unverified video footage has shown them using tear gas and live-round ammunition to disperse and intimidate crowds in Tehran, who were chanting against the country’s leadership and the IRGC.

Those arrested will continue to be questioned, a spokesman for Iran’s judiciary, Gholam-Hossein Esmaili, told reporters, according to the semi-official Mehr news agency. Esmaili, who did not specify how many people had been detained, added that Iranian and Ukrainian investigators had traveled to France with the flight’s black box and their work should provide more clarity on the tragedy.

Photo: IRNA