“Will not forget and will not forgive.” Iran condemned ten soldiers for attacking a Ukrainian plane flying from Tehran, but no one believed him
In mid-April 2023, a court in Iran convicted ten servicemen involved in the crash of the Ukrainian Boeing 737, which was shot down on January 8, 2020. The plane was hit by two missiles fired by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, killing all passengers and crew — 176 people.
Three years later, Iranian judicial authorities announced that they had been sentenced to 13 years for one of the defendants, the commander of the anti-aircraft missile system the missiles fired from (he will have another ten years imprisonment); nine others were sentenced to terms of one to three years. Each victim should be paid $150,000 in compensation.
There were no mentions of the trial’s details as well as the names of the convicts. The trial process was closed.
Iran has publicly announced only the report on the investigation of the disaster, but international experts and human rights defenders still have many questions concerning it.
Relatives of the victims, who united in the Association and created their Committee to gather facts about the causes of the disaster, called the court’s decision unacceptable and plan to continue seeking justice in international courts.
“Graty” tells about the tragedy, the struggle of the victims’ relatives, and the decision of the Iranian court.
The missile
The Boeing 737–800NG of Ukraine International Airlines took off from Tehran Imam Khomeini Airport at 6:12 am local time (around 4:30 Kyiv time) on January 8, 2020. It was scheduled to fly to Kyiv. The plane crashed immediately after takeoff. All 176 people who were on the plane died — 167 passengers and 9 crew members. Among the dead are citizens of Canada, Iran, Germany, Sweden, Afghanistan, and Great Britain. Nine crew members and two passengers were Ukrainians.
The Ukrainian Embassy in Iran then immediately reported* that the cause of the fall was an engine malfunction. The version of a terrorist attack or a missile strike was denied by the diplomatic establishment.
*[in FB you may see the edited statement without the phrase regarding an engine malfunction, but in the edit history you may see the first message — translator’s note]
The very next day after the crash, the heads of the Western states made statements citing intelligence data that the Boeing had been shot down by Iranian surface-to-air missiles. Ukraine considered several versions and on the same day, announced the too most likely — a terrorist attack or a missile hit.
The Ukrainian TV channel 1+1, citing sources in the Ukrainian special services, published a recording of negotiations between the Tehran airport air traffic controller and the co-pilot of the Iranian Aseman Airlines EP3768 Shiraz-Tehran flight, which was landing at the time of the crash of the Ukrainian airliner.
According to the Flightradar resource, on January 8, an Iranian plane landed in Tehran at 6:31. At 6:12 am, the UIA plane took off. During the negotiations, the pilot of the Iranian plane tells the controller that he sees the launch of the missile.
Pilot: “Flight 3768, we are landing from the north … Along the route, a series of lights like a missile. Could there be something like that?”
Controller: “We were not informed about this. What does it look like? What does this light look like?”
Pilot: “It’s definitely the light from a missile, it flew from the city side.”
Controller: “We weren’t told anything, but keep watching.”
After the conversation, the controller unsuccessfully tried to contact the UIA aircraft.
Iran admitted that it fired at the civilian plane only on the third day after the crash — at that time, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani tweeted that “regrettably missiles fired due to human error caused the horrific crash of the Ukrainian plane & death of 176 innocent people.”
In his emergency statement on state television, he vowed to investigate the actions of the military and punish those responsible.
In their official statement, the command of the Iranian armed forces explained that the plane was mistaken for a hostile target since the military forces were at a high level of combat readiness due to the tense situation with the United States.
On the eve of the disaster, the situation in the region escalated due to the conflict between the United States and Iran. On January 3, Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani, who was in charge of the country’s special operations abroad, was killed. Iranian authorities claimed that the United States was involved, and on the morning of January 8, they retaliated by attacking a US military base in neighboring Iraq.
Protests and arrests
When the Iranian authorities nevertheless confessed to firing at the plane, protests were held in several cities, including Tehran, Amol, Shiraz and Mashhad, demanding that those responsible be held accountable.
In his report to the UN General Assembly in July 2020, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Javaid Rehman, reported that on January 11 and 12, Iranian security forces shot at protesters, used tear gas, batons, as a result of which many were injured. Some of them were refused medical assistance, some did not go to the hospital because law enforcement officers were on duty there and took the wounded to military hospitals or arrested them.
According to data cited by Javaid Rehman, the number of detainees at the time was at least 500 people. On January 14, 2020, judicial authorities announced that around 30 people had been arrested.
On January 12, 2020, British Ambassador Rob Macair was detained in a crowd of protesters near Tehran’s Amir Kabir University of Technology. He was accused of “instigating and directing radical and destructive demonstrations” but was later released.
Macair himself wrote later on Twitter that he did not participate in the demonstrations but came to honor the memory of the dead. As soon as the chanting of the demonstrators began, he left the square.
One of the demonstrators was Bahareh Hedayat, a student and human rights activist who fought for women’s rights in Iran. In July 2022, she was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison, accused of crimes against national security and propaganda against the state for social media posts about the disaster.
The Irish human rights organization Front Line Defenders reported that Hedayat was later charged with “gathering and colluding against national security” and “promotion of immorality and prostitution”.
At the same time, the Iranian authorities persecuted and intimidated the relatives of those killed in the plane crash.
As the international human rights organization Human Rights Watch noted in its report, from October 2020 to January 2021, human rights defenders spoke with 31 relatives and acquaintances of the victims, and 16 of them stated that employees of the Iranian special services threatened them not to communicate with foreign journalists.
The special services also monitored those who visited the burial places of the victims of the plane crash and then detained and intimidated these people. At least one person was tortured, and three were threatened with “consequences” if they did not delete posts about the Iranian government on social networks.
21 people stated that the authorities tried to prevent the holding of memorial and funeral services — officers in civilian and military uniform attended the ceremony.
Investigation
Almost a year after the disaster, Iran released a report on the investigation. According to the official version, the plane was hit by two missiles of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the military branch of Iran’s executive power. The downing of the plane happened, according to the Iranian side, due to human error in the operation of the air defense system.
According to the report, the air defense system was a Russian-made TOR M-1 anti-aircraft missile system known in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as the SA-15 Gauntlet.
The air defense system hit the plane six minutes after it took off from the airport in Tehran.
The missile battery was moved about 100 meters and its direction had to be recalibrated, the report said. But the military did not do this, and therefore the missile had an “error” of 105 degrees during launch.
The report also said the operator determined the civilian aircraft was a “hostile object” approaching Tehran from a different direction. He relayed the message to the command, but it was not registered. The report did not mention the reasons.
That’s when the operator fired the first missile, which, according to the report, exploded in close proximity to the airliner, causing significant damage and causing a fire in the cockpit area to the left of the aircraft.
The first missile also damaged two of the plane’s flight recorders, which took months to decipher after the crash and required the cooperation of Ukraine and an expert laboratory in France, the report said.
With the plane still airborne and flying, the operator fired another missile about 40 seconds later. It could explode at a distance of about 900 meters from the plane and probably did not cause any damage.
All three crew members piloting the aircraft were conscious after the initial missile strike and attempted to control the situation, but the catastrophic damage ultimately caused the aircraft to crash.
The report also says that due to the tense situation, Iran has suspended all flights to neighboring Iraq and countries west of it. However, the risk to aircraft departing from Imam Khomeini Airport, in particular, was assessed as very low. The Iranian side admitted that such a forecast was wrong, again due to human error.
The Ukrainian side criticized the Iranian report. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called the document “a cynical attempt to hide true causes of the downing of our passenger aircraft” and the report itself “a great despair for Ukraine and the rest of the civilized world.”
“We are forced to conclude that the investigation has been biased, presented proves are selective, and conclusions are deceptive. The document neither presents all the circumstances nor reveals the root causes of the tragedy or the chain of actions that led to it. This is not a report, but a collection of manipulations, aimed not at establishing truth, but acquitting the Islamic Republic of Iran”.
“An analysis of the document proves that Iran conducted the technical investigation with numerous violations of international standards of Chicago Convention and ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization”, stated Kuleba.
After the release of the report UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions Agnes Callamard said that she had sent a 45-page letter to the Iranian authorities with questions about the disaster but had not received a response. Three months after her conversion, she made the letter public. The Special Rapporteur stated that “the inconsistencies in the official explanations seem designed to create a maximum of confusion and a minimum of clarity.”
In the letter, Callamard cited separated questions that, in her opinion, the Iranian authorities did not answer:
Callamard’s letter detailed a large number of contradictions with Iran’s explanations, including:
- Why the IRGC military failed to follow the most basic standard procedures, such as monitoring altitude, climb or descent rate and airspeed to check the target visually;
- how information about cleared civilian flights was communicated to IRGC units to ensure the safety of civilian aircraft;
- why other flights that took off that night, before PS752, were not targeted if the Iranian authorities refer to the fact that the error occurred in a tense situation for the military;
- why, over the first three days, the government refused to admit the downing of the plane even though they knew almost immediately what had occurred.
“The Iranian Government has failed to meet its obligations of respect for the remains of the deceased, including by its disrespectful handling of the crash site, its efforts to obstruct family wishes to repatriate remains; by its interference with private burials. All this is compounded by entirely unacceptable harassment and threats against some family members,” — noted Callamard.
“Iran’s interim and final report shows that they did not conduct an impartial and credible investigation… All members of Iran’s National Security Council must be held accountable for keeping the airspace open. Amir Ali Hadjizadeh, the commander of the IRGC Aerospace Forces, is responsible for the downing of the PS752 plane with missiles, but we do not know who was the operator of the TOR-M1 system, its commander and other persons in the chain of command.” — told to “Graty” Javad Soleimani — the head of the Fact-Finding Committee of the Association of the Families and the husband of one of the passengers of the plane PS752 during correspondence on June 15, 2021.
The couple moved to Canada in 2018. Elnaz was returning from Iran after visiting her parents.
The Iranian report was analyzed in detail by Canadian Forensic Team experts. They gave their conclusions about the disaster in June 2021.
First: Iran did not take steps to ensure the safety of its airspace and did not inform the airline of the risks. Iran has placed anti-aircraft systems on high alert right next to the international airport. At the same time, the country’s authorities decided not to close the airspace over Tehran despite military threats.
“Information suggests that senior Iranian civilian and military decision makers prioritized defence over the safety of civilian air traffic.” — they stated in the report.
The second conclusion: experts assessed that it is likely the SAM operator failed to align the direction indication system of the SAM unit properly or correct the misalignment over the six hours after it was deployed and operational. However, this misalignment alone should not have resulted in the shoot-down, experts clarify.
Based on expert analysis of this type of weapon, such a misalignment would have resulted in the inaccurate representation of potential hostile threats on the SAM operator’s radar. “A misalignment of 105 degrees would likely have resulted in Flight PS752 appearing to approach the SAM operator from the southwest (Iraq) rather than the true direction from IKA, which was in the southeast”.
According to their data the acts of shooting the missiles was intended action. “The information available to the Forensic Team indicates the IRGC SAM unit operator likely misidentified Flight PS752 as a hostile target”, — stated the report. A properly functioning command and control system, and effective training could have prevented this outcome. However, Iran has not provided any substantive information on these important factors.
The third conclusion: the military command of Iran did not take appropriate actions to prevent violations by the operator of the surface-to-air missile unit of the established order of combat duty and the unauthorized launch of missiles. Moreover, Iran tried to hide the true circumstances of the disaster. The technical report prepared by Iran does not fully establish the chain of events that preceded the tragedy, Canadian experts emphasize.
In addition, they came to the conclusion that the recommendations proposed by Iran to eliminate shortcomings in the civil aviation security system are irrelevant and, accordingly, all the risks that led to the downing of the Ukrainian plane remain to this day, in particular, in times of heightened tension in Iran’s international relations with other countries.
Ukraine held several rounds of negotiations with Iran. As a result of the third round, Ukraine agreed to Iran’s offer to review the materials of the criminal case in the Iranian judiciary, as well as to the possibility of the presence of Ukrainian representatives during the trial in Iran without the right to vote.
Immediately after the negotiations, the Prosecutor General’s Office sent a letter regarding the procedure for agreeing on the procedure for examining evidence, preparing the necessary documents, and appointing representatives of Ukraine to the delegation. But they never received a response from the Iranian side, former Prosecutor General of Ukraine Iryna Venediktova reported during a meeting in October 2021 with Hamed Esmailion, president of the Association of Families of PS752 Victims, who lost his wife and daughter.
The former Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine Gunduz Mamedov, who worked as part of the international group investigating this crime, wrote in his column on Radio Svoboda before the second anniversary of the disaster that Ukraine was conducting its own investigation — into the facts of the intentional murder of two or more people, committed in a manner dangerous for the lives of many people; intentional damage to property, which caused the death of people; as well as violations of traffic safety rules or transport operation with prior legal qualification of criminal offenses (under para. 1, 5, part 2 of Art. 115, part 2 of Art. 194, Part 3 of Art. 276 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).
According to the Criminal Code of Ukraine, crimes of grave or especially grave severity against citizens of Ukraine, against the interests and security of Ukraine, were committed on the territory of Iran. The investigation of these crimes is the duty of the state both at the international level and before the citizens. Despite the fact that the airspace over Iran is its sovereign territory, the Ukrainian aircraft — according to the rules of international law — is the sovereign territory of Ukraine, Mamedov explained. Therefore, the law enforcement agencies of Ukraine are obliged to conduct an investigation until all those involved in the crime are brought to justice and until the victims receive their due satisfaction and compensation.
Mamedov noted that the Ukrainian investigation would progress much better if the Iranian side contributed to it.
“Iranian authorities gave double signals. For example, on the one hand, in the first days after the disaster, they gave Ukrainian specialists access to the place where the aircraft fell, but our specialists could only observe how the Iranians were collecting the wreckage of the Ukrainian plane with a bulldozer,” the prosecutor noted.
Later, the Iranian side repeatedly emphasized that the investigation into the attack on PS 752 was an internal matter for Iran. The Ukrainian side offered to conduct joint examinations on the territory of Iran with the participation of Ukrainian experts, but Iran ignored these proposals.
Canada’s lawsuit
In May 2021, the Ontario Superior Court ruled on a lawsuit filed by four relatives of the victims, finding that the missile strikes on the UIA plane were an “act of terrorism.”
The plaintiffs claimed that the downing of the passenger plane was revenge for the US killing of General Soleimani and demanded financial compensation.
In the decision, the judge referred to two experts, one of whom concluded that “the IRGC knew Flight PS 752 was a civilian airplane and purposely shot it down with the intent to destroy it.”
Defendants in the case were Iran, the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Iranian Armed Forces and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, but the Iranian side did not participate in the trial.
International law states that one country cannot prosecute another in its courts, guaranteeing so-called state immunity, but Canadian law has an exception to this principle — it does not apply to countries that commit acts of terrorism.
In a subsequent decision, an Ontario court awarded the plaintiffs 107 million Canadian dollars (at the time about 84 million US dollars).
The Iranian side has not yet recognized the first decision of the Canadian court. “Everybody knows that a Canadian court has no jurisdiction over this plane crash” because it happened outside of Canada, foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said. Also, according to him, the court’s decision “is not based on eyewitness testimony.”
In January of this year, Canadian lawyers for the families of the victims, Mark and Jonah Arnolds, filed another lawsuit in an Ontario court to seize and sell former Iranian diplomatic property in Canada. And thereby be able to collect from Iran the compensation that the court awarded earlier.
The court stated that despite the severed diplomatic relations as early as 2012, Iran’s property is under diplomatic immunity. The court also noted that this contradicts the law on the protection of victims of terrorism, which was referred to in previous decisions regarding the crash of the Ukrainian plane. But only the Canadian executive can change the situation. The lawyers intended to appeal this decision. They have not yet announced the decision of the appeal.
The indicted. Sentence
Iran initially indicted six people, and later four more, without releasing their names or the details of the investigation.
At the end of November 2021, the trial in this case began. As a result, 20 court hearings took place, after which the court announced the verdict.
According to the lawyer of the families of the two Ukrainian victims, Andrii Huk, only the relatives of the Iranian victims took part in the trial in Iran.
“They actually participated under duress in order to legitimize the trial and the verdict,” Huk told to Graty.
“According to the operational order, the (air defense) system was in the mode of limited fire, and firing missiles without the permission of the command post was not allowed, only on the basis of the decisions of the next command post… No one has the right to act without agreement with the command,” — the court’s message states authorities regarding the sentence.
The decision also stated that the main defendant (the commander of the defense system) did not intend to shoot down the passenger plane, he was not informed about the departure of the UIA plane. The court sentenced him to 10 years and 3 years in prison, noting that he will serve 10 years in prison, taking into account the previous period during which he was imprisoned.
The rest of the accused were sentenced to 1 to 3 years of imprisonment. The families of the victims should be paid 150,000 USD each. According to Andrii Huk, the lawyer of the two Ukrainian victims, Iran’s offer of payment does not include recognition of responsibility for the downing of the plane but only the payment of compensation, which the relatives may or may not agree to. So far, the citizens of Ukraine have not agreed to such compensation.
Iran’s judiciary said after the decision that the trial was one of the most complex in the last few years.
The judicial authorities announced the positions of the convicted. Judging by them, we are probably talking about military personnel whom Gunduz Mamedov previously named as probable suspects:
— Captain Mehdi Khosravi (TOR M-1 commander),
— first lieutenant Meysam Kheirollahi (cameraman),
— third lieutenant Seyed Ahmad Miri (operator),
— first lieutenant Mohammad Majid Eslam Doost,
— Captain Sajjad Mohammadi,
— Major Hamed Mabhout,
— Second Brigadier General Ibrahim Safaei Kia,
— Brigadier General Ali Akbar Seydoun,
— military officer of the Iranian Army, Colonel Mostafa Farati .
The Association of the Families of the Victims stated they would never recognize the Islamic regime’s decision as legitimate, calling it “meaningless and unacceptable”.
“This court did not prosecute the commanders and main perpetrators of this crime, introduced ten accused low-ranking officers with total obscurity of their backgrounds and identities, held sessions in private, flouted the families who attended the hearings, and ultimately issued a sham ruling to end this show in keeping with their predetermined scenario without conducting any full, impartial investigation.”
Therefor the relatives demand that the countries whose citizens died in the disaster seek justice at the UN International Court of Justice, demand that the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps be listed as a terrorist entity, and that the Canadian police initiate a criminal case and investigate the downing of the plane.
“We will not tire in the process of seeking truth and justice for Flight PS752. Countless beautiful lives were lost, the truth remained disguised, and justice was not served. In a state where innocent youth are sentenced to death in summary judgments for wanting freedom, administering justice for the intentional and horrific murder of the victims of this flight ensues in a farce. We shall continue the fight for truth and justice, and we will never forget, nor shall we ever forgive,” — the families said in their statement.
✍️ Viktoriia Matola, Graty, the translation by Dead Lawyers Society is published with the permission of Graty media
