Father of one of the Ukrainian plane crash victims: Airport officials prevented the victims' family from leaving Iran
Hamed Esmailiyon, an Iranian writer and dentist living in Canada who lost his wife and daughter in the downing of a Ukrainian plane by the Revolutionary Guard, announced in a post on his Facebook page that Tehran airport officials have not allowed family members of the victims of the incident to leave the country.
Hamed Esmailiyon, on Monday evening, February 27, announced this news on his Facebook page, writing to Imam Khomeini Airport officials: "Let the family members leave the country easily to attend the funeral. Besides, it is none of your business why the Canadian government issued the visa so easily and within a few hours."
Previously, Javad Soleimani, the husband of Elnaz Nabi, one of the victims of the Ukrainian plane crash, reported being summoned and threatened by the Zanjan Intelligence Department on charges of "insulting Khamenei's representatives," and said he was forced to leave Iran.
He posted on his Instagram page that he had been summoned by the Zanjan Intelligence Department "the morning after the funeral" for "insulting Khamenei's representatives and Instagram posts."
Also, images released from the funeral ceremony of the victims of this plane crash in Iran show that the authorities, by erecting scaffolding, barely allowed families to approach the burial site of their loved ones, turning the ceremony into a state funeral.
Although the Islamic Republic admitted to shooting down the Ukrainian plane following international pressure, the main perpetrators of the downing of the plane have not yet been identified or brought to justice. The father of one of the victims of the Ukrainian plane crash recently criticized the failure to bring the perpetrators of the shooting down of the passenger plane to justice at his son's funeral at a mosque.
The Islamic Republic government has even had security clashes with protesters who protested the IRGC's shooting down of a passenger plane, and according to official statistics, at least 30 people were arrested in this regard.
On the morning of Wednesday, January 8, a Ukrainian Airlines Boeing 737 passenger plane with 176 people on board was shot down by the air defenses of the Revolutionary Guard Corps after taking off from Imam Khomeini International Airport on the outskirts of Tehran. After days of insistence by Iranian officials that the plane had crashed due to a technical malfunction, the IRGC finally announced that it had mistakenly targeted the plane.
Source: Voice of America
