Human Rights Watch: Islamic Republic Imprisons Protesters Against Ukrainian Plane Crash Instead of Accepting Responsibility
Human Rights Watch says the judicial apparatus of the Islamic Republic in late April 2020 sentenced at least 13 people to lengthy prison terms solely for peacefully protesting the Revolutionary Guards’ deadly attack on a Ukrainian aircraft and the Iranian government’s initial denial of the attack on the passenger plane.
Michael Page, Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division, says Iranian authorities are once again following their usual pattern of evading responsibility. Instead of providing details of investigations into the plane crash and those responsible for the deadly mistake, they have convicted individuals who protested the death of 176 people.
Earlier in January, Gholamhossein Esmaili, spokesperson for the Islamic Republic’s judiciary, told reporters that around 30 people had been arrested in connection with the protests, and an unspecified number had been detained in connection with the targeting of the aircraft.
Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752, which took off from Tehran on January 8, 2020 with 176 passengers headed for Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, crashed minutes after takeoff as a result of a missile attack by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps near the city of Parand in Tehran Province. All passengers, most of whom were Iranian, were killed.
The Islamic Republic has so far refused to hand over the black box of this aircraft. Morgan Ortagus, spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, announced on April 19, coinciding with the hundredth day of the aircraft attack: We demand that the Iranian regime hand over the black box and stop harassing the families of the victims, who have the right to mourn in peace.
