Hamed Esmaeilion: Municipality Workers Set Fire to Belongings of Ukrainian Plane Crash Victims
Hamed Esmaeilion, who lost his son and wife in the downing of the Ukrainian plane by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, reported the burning of belongings remaining from the passengers and the destruction of evidence related to the downing of this aircraft.
Hamed Esmaeilion wrote on his Facebook page, noting that seventy-three days have passed since the IRGC downed this plane, stating that “seventy-three days after the IRGC’s crime in Tehran’s airspace in Shahedshahr, the site where the plane crashed, everything has become normal. The ground of the area bears the marks of bulldozers and loaders, and the soil furrows show that everything has been collected. There are no officials there anymore. They have placed cameras somewhere to monitor comings and goings, but there are no officials anymore because, as everyone knows, life must return to its normal course. Journalists too…”
In another section, regarding the remaining belongings of the aircraft victims, he wrote: “Municipality officials have been sent to the area three times and have burned the remaining suitcases and clothes. The municipality, that is, the institution that wants to build a memorial for us, for our loved ones, has burned our loved ones’ mementos three times in the deserts of Shahedshahr.”
Mr. Esmaeilion wrote that “when the sites of air disasters remain untouched for months and years and for kilometers, the Islamic Republic transforms the scene of a crime into a park, garden, or vulgar carnival lot. This is what the Islamic Republic does with people’s memory.”
At dawn on Wednesday, the 18th of Dey, a Boeing 737 passenger aircraft of Ukraine International Airlines with 176 passengers on board, after taking off from Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran’s suburbs, was shot down by the IRGC Air Defense System. After several days of insistence by Iranian officials, who said the plane’s crash resulted from a technical fault, the IRGC eventually announced that it had mistakenly targeted the aircraft.
However, the aircraft’s black box has not yet been sent to other countries, and Islamic Republic officials have made contradictory statements regarding these boxes. Furthermore, not only have those responsible for this incident not been tried to this day, but Ali Rabiei, the government spokesman, had said that “none of the government officials, including the President himself, were aware until Friday evening of the actual cause of the plane crash, which was unintentional friendly air defense fire.”
Earlier, Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada, had requested Iran to hand over the aircraft’s black boxes to his country. Similarly, Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister, recently reported continuing Ukrainian pressure on the Islamic Republic to hand over the black box of the Ukrainian passenger aircraft downed by the IRGC and to identify who gave the order to fire the missile at this aircraft.
Source: Voice of America
