Ukraine: We Will File a Complaint Against Iran at the International Court of Justice

Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister said his country will sooner or later bring the case of the civilian aircraft crash to the International Court of Justice. He said Ukraine has made four offers to negotiate with Iran but has received no response.

Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister has announced that his country may sooner or later file a complaint against Iran at the International Court of Justice regarding the civilian aircraft crash case.

Yevan Enin said on Monday, July 7: “Specifically, we really need a serious legal team because this matter could become a very serious confrontation. We have prepared ourselves to go to the International Court of Justice sooner or later and compel Iranian authorities to agree to a pre-trial settlement, and this will not be possible without having appropriate evidence and documentation. The stronger this evidence is, the greater and faster the chances of reaching an agreement.”

According to Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister, his country has submitted at least four notes to Iran along with a specific proposal to begin negotiations at the earliest possible time. However, he said no official formal response has been received from Iran.

Enin said: “We understood their [Iran’s] willingness to engage in dialogue from some of their interviews.”

According to Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister, the negotiation mechanism is based on information obtained from technical and criminal investigations, and the goal of negotiations is to not only force Iran to apologize on the basis of its international responsibility, but also to provide guarantees to prevent such an incident in the future and to pay compensation.

Iran’s Response

The Deputy Legal and International Affairs Advisor of Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in an interview with the Mizan website regarding the Ukrainian civilian aircraft crash case, said: “If any country engages in mischief regarding the Ukrainian aircraft incident, it will only harm itself; the reason is that the path of this matter has been determined by international law. The matter is a specific matter, and if anyone wants to go outside the framework, they will harm themselves.”

Mohsen Baharvand said Iran agreed in “good faith” to transfer the aircraft’s black box to Ukraine, but Ukraine said it does not have the capability to read this box and it should be transferred to a third country.

This comes after seven months have passed since the incident and Iran has not sent the black boxes to any country. In the latest statement, it was announced that the boxes will be sent to France on July 21.

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister claimed it was the Ukrainian side that “wasted time” and said: “In any case, sometimes too much good faith causes misunderstanding from the other side.”

Six countries whose nationals were on the Ukrainian aircraft have repeatedly asked Iran either to enter into negotiations or to hand over the black boxes, and none of these requests have been fulfilled by Iran.

While Ukraine’s Foreign Minister said he has sent four specific proposals to Iran and Iran has not responded, the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic said to Mizan: “The Ukrainian side wasted a lot of our time and did not engage with us in negotiations regarding the aforementioned draft; therefore, we decided that due to Ukraine’s procrastination and the unwillingness of the relevant countries to hold a meeting to determine the fate of the mentioned incident due to the spread of corona, we would coordinate with the French air accident investigation office to transfer the black box.”

Regarding the audio file of a conversation between an Iranian official and one of the survivors of the aircraft crash, Baharvand said: “First, we have not heard this audio and do not know where it came from; second, it is possible that someone speaks with one of the survivors of this tragedy and tries to console them; citing this as a fact has no authenticity and has no legal validity; what is certain and our completed report now shows is that human error was the cause of this incident; if, according to claims from some media circles, there was intent in our actions, we should not have arrested 6 people and prepared them for trial.”

Canadian news network “CBC” revealed in a report that it obtained a 91-minute audio file recorded on March 7 of this year containing a conversation between a family member of one of the victims of the Ukrainian aircraft crash and Hassan Rezaifar, the head of Iran’s investigation committee regarding this incident.

Based on statements made in this “audio file,” senior Iranian officials did not declare this country’s airspace closed to flights on the 9th of January of last year in order to prevent the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ missile attack on American bases in Iraq from being revealed.

Flight PS752 of the Ukrainian (UIA) Boeing-737 civilian aircraft on the 8th of January (18th of December of the previous year) six minutes after takeoff from the runway of “Imam Khomeini” airport near Tehran was targeted by two air defense missiles of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and was shot down. All 176 passengers on this aircraft were killed.

Three days after the incident, Iran admitted that it “accidentally fired at the civilian aircraft.” Before that, Iranian officials in contradictory statements claimed technical defect was the cause of the crash. However, ultimately, including under international pressure, they acknowledged firing at the aircraft and attributed the reason to “human error.”

Source: DW