New Year Message from Families of Victims of Ukraine Airliner Shot Down by IRGC: We Hope 1400 Will Be the Year of Justice
Families of victims of the Ukrainian commercial airliner shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps released a video on Monday, the 2nd of Farvardin 1400 (Persian calendar), extending New Year greetings to the Iranian people. The families expressed hope that the year 1400 would be “the year of justice for all those whose spring was devastated by the storm of oppression, and in memory of all those who did not witness the blossoms of this spring.”
In another section of the New Year message, the families stated: “Spring comes without blossoms for Flight families. For Flight families, numbers have become meaningless. 1398, 1399, 1400 – for Flight families, only one number remains: 752. Only one date remains: the 18th of Dey.”
On the morning of Wednesday, December 18, 1398 (January 8, 2020), a Boeing 737 aircraft of Ukraine International Airlines with 176 passengers on board bound for Kyiv crashed shortly after taking off from Tehran airport when two missiles fired by the IRGC struck it.
Islamic Republic authorities initially claimed the plane crashed due to technical failure. However, the United States specifically announced at that time that the aircraft had been shot down. After several days, the IRGC finally admitted that it had mistakenly targeted the aircraft. This delay in revealing the truth and the Iranian government’s deception provoked public anger and widespread protests.
The shooting down of the Ukrainian aircraft occurred when the IRGC, ostensibly in retaliation for the killing of Qasem Soleimani, fired missiles at uninhabited sections of an American military base in Iraq. Canada, Britain, Afghanistan, and Sweden, whose citizens were killed in the incident, have formed a coalition to pursue this case to its conclusion.
Source: Voice of America
