Downing of Ukrainian Aircraft; Complaint Filed Against Khamenei and IRGC

Families of some victims of the Ukrainian aircraft that was shot down by a missile strike near Tehran have filed a complaint against Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). A law office in Washington is pursuing this complaint on behalf of survivors with American citizenship.

A law office based in Washington has announced in a statement that on behalf of a number of relatives of victims of flight 752 of Ukraine International Airlines who held American citizenship, it has filed a complaint against the government of the Islamic Republic led by Ali Khamenei and the IRGC commanded by Hossein Salami.

According to this statement issued on Friday, October 16 (Mehr 25), the complaint of the victims’ relatives has been registered in the federal court of the Washington D.C. district, and the plaintiffs hope “this case will be an impactful step toward seeking justice and holding those responsible for and those who ordered this crime accountable.”

The Ukrainian passenger aircraft crashed early morning on December 8, 2019 (Dey 18), shortly after takeoff from Tehran airport due to being struck by two missiles from the IRGC’s air defense system, and all 176 passengers and crew on board perished.

Passenger Aircraft as Defensive Shield?

The downing of the Ukrainian aircraft occurred hours after IRGC forces, in retaliation for the killing of Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force at the time, in a U.S. drone strike, launched a number of missiles toward two U.S. military bases and their allies in Iraq.

Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the IRGC’s Aerospace Force, after a three-day delay, took responsibility for this catastrophic error in a television interview and said that the operator of the IRGC’s air defense system had “mistakenly identified the Ukrainian passenger aircraft as a cruise missile” and fired upon it.

One of the most significant accusations against Iran is allowing passenger aircraft to fly despite declaring a state of alert due to concerns about potential U.S. retaliatory strikes. The Islamic Republic is accused of misusing passenger aircraft as a human shield to prevent possible American attacks.

The Harrsch law office in Washington emphasized in its statement that relatives of a number of victims have filed a complaint due to “failure to protect the safety of passengers’ lives in wartime conditions, as well as concealing key evidence, destroying accident remains at the crash site, and in order to clarify the hidden aspects of this incident.”

The statement reads: “Unfortunately, the families of the victims not only have no confidence in a proper investigation of this incident by those responsible for it, but also have no confidence in Iran’s judiciary to implement justice.”

This complaint is one of the international efforts by survivors of the downed Ukrainian aircraft that is currently being pursued in the judicial systems of foreign countries.

Demand for $1.1 Billion in Compensation in Canadian Court

Last November, exactly one month after the incident, a legal team in Canada submitted a complaint on behalf of a number of survivors of the victims, demanding compensation of one and a half billion Canadian dollars (equivalent to approximately $1.1 billion USD).

This team is led by Mark Arnold, a prominent Canadian lawyer who had previously succeeded in obtaining a judgment convicting the Islamic Republic and freezing two buildings belonging to it from the court.

The Canadian government formally notified Iranian authorities last month that to date, in connection with the downing of the Ukrainian aircraft, two class-action lawsuits against the Islamic Republic and some of its senior officials have been filed in this country’s courts.

The Aircraft Accidents and Incidents Investigation Bureau of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization announced in a report released on February 9 that among the passengers of the downed Ukrainian aircraft, 146 held Iranian passports and five held Canadian passports, and most of the other victims were Ukrainian citizens.

This was while 52 passengers of the aircraft were dual Iranian-Canadian nationals and some were of Iranian descent and citizens of countries such as Britain and Sweden.

Iran’s Focus on Negotiations with Ukraine

Apparently, the Islamic Republic, which does not recognize dual citizenship, is attempting to advance compensation payment negotiations by focusing on talks with Ukrainian officials.

ISNA news agency reported yesterday (Saturday, Mehr 26) that the first round of negotiations between Iranian and Ukrainian delegations took place on August 31 and September 1 under the leadership of Mohsen Baharvand, deputy for legal and international affairs of the Foreign Ministry, and his Ukrainian counterpart, with the second round scheduled to be held on October 19-21 in Tehran.

Baharvand says that in this round of negotiations, three technical sessions will be held, one of which is “regarding legal issues concerning the amount of compensation for individuals and the aircraft.” Meanwhile, negotiations have also taken place between Iranian and Ukrainian officials in Ukraine.

According to ISNA, Manouchehr Moradi, Iran’s ambassador to Kyiv, said to the official Ukrainian news agency after these negotiations: “Compensation payment, like the other aspects of the incident, has a legal and international framework. In negotiations and interviews conducted later, we stated that we are ready to pay compensation based on international rules and Iran’s obligations in the conventions to which it is a party. This means that we will not accept any formula for compensation payment, and this is an important point.”

Thus, apparently the Islamic Republic is trying to preemptively discredit possible rulings by courts in Canada and the United States, but experience in recent years shows that these efforts often fail. Meanwhile, many survivors of the downed Ukrainian aircraft have repeatedly emphasized that seeking justice and holding those responsible for and those who ordered this incident accountable is more important to them than receiving compensation.

Source: DW