Iran says its military "unintentionally" shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet (176 dead) [Post #83]

[MenInG]

Iran has ceased co-operation with Ukraine in its investigation into the downing of Ukrainian passenger jet PS752 by Iranian missiles last month.

It comes after leaked remarks suggested Iran knew immediately that it had struck the plane.

Ukrainian TV aired an exchange between air traffic control and a pilot who was landing as the jet crashed.

The Iranian pilot allegedly states he saw a flash like missile fire in the sky, and then an explosion.

Iran initially denied responsibility for the downing on 8 January that killed 176, but Ukraine's president said the conversation proved the country knew the flight had been hit by a missile.

At the time Iran was on high alert, having fired ballistic missiles at two US bases in Iraq in retaliation for the killing of top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike in Baghdad.

"We will no longer provide any documents to the Ukrainians," the head of the Iranian investigation team, Hassan Rezaeifar, told Iranian news agency Mehr on Monday.

In the aftermath of the incident, Iran agreed to co-operate in investigating with "foreign experts".

There are clearly tensions over the conduct of the investigation, the BBC's correspondent in Ukraine Jonah Fisher explains.

Ukraine wants to look at the black box flight recorders. Iran has been stalling for weeks and is insisting on trying to extract the information in Tehran, he adds.

What's in the leaked recording?
The recording is of a conversation between an Iranian pilot who was landing shortly after the doomed Ukrainian passenger jet took off, and the control tower in Tehran.

In an audio clip published by a Ukrainian YouTube channel, the Aseman Airlines pilot says he is seeing lights in the sky ahead.

"Is this an active area? There's lights like a missile. Is there anything?" he says.

"Nothing has been reported to us. What's the light like?" the controller replies.

The pilot says: "It's the light of a missile."

Iran 'arrests person who filmed plane downing'
The control tower is then heard trying to contact the Ukrainian plane several times, without success.

After a few minutes, the Iranian pilot tells the control tower he has just seen a "big light from an explosion".

When politics and air investigations collide
The country where a plane crashes is usually responsible for leading investigations, but political interests can get in the way.

In 2014 a missile hit flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine at the height of conflict between Ukrainian troops and Russian-backed groups.

Both sides blamed each other for the disaster which killed 283 passengers.

The Netherlands, which lost 193 citizens, commissioned three investigations, and in 2018 a joint team concluded the plane was downed by a Russian missile.

In 2015 Egyptian and Russian officials disagreed on the causes of the Russian Airbus 321 crash in the Sinai peninsula which killed 224 people.

It wasn't until 2016 that the Egyptian president acknowledged the Russians' conclusion that Islamic state militants were behind the disaster.

And sometimes airlines are reluctant to admit they may be at fault.

A Yemenia Airways crash en route to the tiny Comoros Islands in 2009 was blamed on pilot error by French and US officials.

But Yemenia Airways, which had been accused previously of poor safety, rejected the findings and demanded further readings of the plane's black box.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-51356626

 

[Firebat]

Iran navy 'friendly fire' incident kills 19 sailors in Gulf of Oman

Nineteen sailors have been killed and 15 others injured in an accident involving Iranian naval vessels in the Gulf of Oman, Iran's navy has said.

Iranian media reported that the support ship Konarak was hit by a new anti-ship missile being tested by the frigate Jamaran during an exercise on Sunday.

The Konarak had been putting targets out in the water and remained too close to one, according to the reports.

The navy said the ship was towed ashore and that an investigation had begun.

The incident took place near the Strait of Hormuz, a strategically important waterway through which about a fifth of the world's oil passes.

"On Sunday evening... during naval exercises performed by a number of the naval force's vessels in the waters of Jask and Chabahar, an accident happened involving the Konarak light support ship vessel, causing the martyrdom of a number of brave members of the naval forces," the navy said in a statement on Monday.

The statement added that the Konarak had been taken to a port for "technical inspection", but it made no reference to the circumstances of the accident.

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-52612511

 

[JaDed]

The biggest loss of reputation in last 1 year- IRAN.

 

[CricketCartoons]

The biggest loss of reputation in last 1 year- IRAN.

for the iranian regime you mean? Iran is still a proud country and civilization, better than india.

 

[JaDed]

for the iranian regime you mean? Iran is still a proud country and civilization, better than india.

Yes.. the regime.

 

[Firebat]

Iran asks French experts to read black boxes of downed jet: official

(Reuters) - Iranian investigators have asked France’s BEA air accident agency to read black boxes from a downed Ukrainian jetliner, Iran’s envoy to the United Nations aviation agency said.

The Ukraine International Airlines flight was shot down on Jan. 8 by an Iranian ground-to-air missile, killing 176 people in what Tehran termed a “disastrous mistake” at a time of heightened tensions with the United States.

The fate of the cockpit voice and data ‘black-box’ recorders has been the subject of an international standoff eclipsed by the coronavirus crisis, which Iran says has also contributed to delays in a probe by Iran’s Air Accident Investigation Board.

Progress was discussed at a council meeting of the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization on Wednesday.

“Iran’s AAIB recently made a request to the BEA that the recorders should be taken by Iran to the BEA’s premises in France to be read in the presence of representatives of other involved countries and ICAO, if the BEA is in a position to accommodate this,” Farhad Parvaresh, Iran’s representative to the UN agency, told Reuters by telephone.

The BEA said it had not formally received the request and remained in discussions with Iran, Canada and Ukraine on any involvement it may have. Canada had 57 citizens on board.

Iran has accused the United States, which built the Boeing 737-800, of refusing to provide software to decipher the recorders, while Canada and Ukraine have accused Tehran of dragging its feet over the probe.

Sources said earlier this week that Iran had told ICAO it would take the recorders to Paris once countries involved in the probe agreed.

Iran had earlier said it would send them to Ukraine.

Canada this week called on Iran to allow the recorders to be downloaded in a suitable facility as soon as possible.

The BEA last month read black-box data from a Pakistan-operated Airbus that crashed in Karachi on May 22. Pakistani investigators are expected to issue a preliminary report soon.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ck-boxes-of-downed-jet-official-idUSKBN23J1UP

 

[Firebat]

Iran says misaligned radar led to Ukrainian jet downing

Iran has said the misalignment of an air defence unit's radar system was the key "human error" that led to the accidental downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane in January.

"A failure occurred due to a human error in following the procedure" for aligning the radar, causing a "107-degree error" in the system, the Iranian Civil Aviation Organisation (CAO) said in a report late on Saturday.

This error "initiated a hazard chain" that saw further errors committed in the minutes before the plane was shot down, said the CAO document, presented as a "factual report" and not as the final report on the accident investigation.

Flight 752, a Ukraine International Airlines plane, was struck by two missiles and crashed shortly after taking off from Tehran's main airport on January 8, at a time of heightened US-Iranian tensions.

Iran admitted several days later that its forces accidentally shot down the Kyiv-bound plane, killing all 176 people on board.

Spoiler

'Wrong identification'

The CAO said despite the erroneous information available to the radar system operator on the aircraft's trajectory, he could have identified his target as an airliner, but instead, there was a "wrong identification".

The report also noted that the first of the two missiles launched at the aircraft was fired by a defence unit operator who had acted "without receiving any response from the Coordination Centre" on which he depended.

The second missile was fired 30 seconds later, "by observing the continuity of trajectory of the detected target", the report added.

Tehran's air defences had been on high alert at the time the jet was shot down in case the US retaliated against Iranian strikes hours earlier on American troops stationed in Iraq.

Those strikes were carried out in response to the killing of a top Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani, in a US drone attack near Baghdad airport.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020...ed-ukrainian-jet-downing-200712102324803.html

 

[Firebat]

Ukraine: it's too early to blame human error for downing of passenger plane in Iran

KYIV (Reuters) - Ukraine’s foreign minister said on Tuesday it was soon to blame human error for the shooting down of a Ukrainian passenger airliner near Tehran in January, challenging the findings of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organisation (CAO).

The CAO said in an interim report that the plane was accidentally downed, killing 176 people on board, because of a misalignment of a radar system and lack of communication between the air defence operator and his commanders.

But Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told an online briefing that many questions remained unanswered.

“I want to clearly emphasise: it is early to say that the plane was shot down as a result of human error, as the Iranian side claims,” he said. “We have many questions, and we need a large number of authoritative, unbiased, objective answers about what happened.”

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards shot down the Ukraine International Airlines flight with a ground-to-air missile on Jan. 8 shortly after the plane took off from Tehran. Iran later called it a “disastrous mistake” by forces who were on high alert during a confrontation with the United States.

Tehran said last month said it would send the black box flight recorders from the downed airliner to France for analysis and that experts from the United States, Canada, France, Britain and Ukraine would take part in the decoding.

Kuleba said an Iranian delegation was due to arrive in Kiev later this month to discuss compensation. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in February Kiev was not satisfied with the size of compensation Iran had offered.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ning-of-passenger-plane-in-iran-idUSKCN24F104

 

[Firebat]

Iran has sent black boxes of downed plane to France: official

(Reuters) - Iran has sent the black boxes from a Ukrainian airliner that it had accidentally downed in January to France for analysis, a Foreign Ministry official said on Saturday.

Some 176 people were killed when the Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s most powerful military force, fired missiles at the Ukraine International Airlines mistaking it for a hostile target while on high alert during a confrontation with the United States.

“The black boxes were transported to Paris yesterday by officials of the Civil Aviation Authority and a judge,” Mohsen Baharvand, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for international and legal affairs, was quoted as saying by the the semi-official ILNA news agency.

He said France will begin reading the flight recorders on Monday and praised the French government for its “very good cooperation with the Iranian delegation”.

France’s BEA air accident investigation agency is known as one of the world’s leading agencies for reading flight recorders.

The fate of the cockpit voice and data recorders was the subject of an international standoff after the plane was shot down on Jan. 8, with Ukraine demanding access.

In an interim report last week Iran’s Civil Aviation Organisation blamed a misalignment of a radar system and lack of communication between the air defence operator and his commanders for the downing.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...downed-plane-to-france-official-idUSKCN24J0GU

 

[Firebat]

Ukraine welcomes 'constructive' first talks with Iran on downing of airliner

KYIV (Reuters) - Ukraine said on Friday that its first round of talks with Iran about the downing of a Ukrainian airliner shortly after takeoff in Tehran in January had been constructive, and that it was determined “to bring Iran to justice”.

All 176 people on board - including 57 Canadians - were killed when Iranian forces struck the Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737 jet. Iran said they mistook the passenger plane for a missile at a time of high tensions with the United States.

“The talks ended late last night. The talks lasted 11 hours. In general, they were constructive,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a video briefing after meeting with an Iranian delegation.

Kuleba said the sides had agreed the terms of next round of talks and that Kyiv would not allow anyone to drag out the negotiations.

Later on Friday, the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office said the next round was set for October.

“Of course, if the negotiations with Iran are unsuccessful, then we will go to international courts and I have absolutely no doubt that we will bring Iran to justice. But this is plan B,” Kuleba said.

“And plan A is negotiations with Iran and the solution of all these issues and the payment of compensation. We saw Iran was disposed to a serious and substantive conversation,” he said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ith-iran-on-downing-of-airliner-idUSKCN24W11R

 

[Firebat]

Iran plane crash: Cockpit exchange recorded after missile hit Ukraine jet

A black box recorder recovered from a Ukrainian passenger jet mistakenly shot down by Iran in January captured a conversation in the cockpit moments after a missile strike, officials say.

Data from the Boeing 737 indicated that the pilots and passengers were alive before a second missile hit 25 seconds later, Iran's aviation authority said.

The Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) flight crashed shortly after taking off from Tehran.

All 176 people on board were killed.

After initially denying any responsibility for the incident, Iran admitted it had shot down the UIA flight "unintentionally", calling it a "disastrous mistake" by Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Iran's air defences had been on high alert at the time. Hours earlier, the country had fired ballistic missiles at two US bases in Iraq in retaliation for the killing of top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani by a US drone strike in Baghdad.

Read more:

Spoiler

What is the latest on the crash?

During a press conference on Sunday, Capt Zanganeh, head of the Civil Aviation Organisation of Iran (CAOI), said "up to 19 seconds" of conversation between two pilots and a pilot instructor had been captured in the aircraft's cabin after the first missile struck.

It was "25 seconds later that the second missile hit the plane", he said, adding: "They were piloting the plane until the last moment."

He said information recorded by the plane's black boxes - which hold key data and communications from the cockpit - indicated that the aircraft had been "in a normal flight corridor" before the first missile exploded, sending shrapnel into the aircraft.

Capt Zanganeh added: "At this moment, the plane has an electrical problem and the auxiliary power of the plane is turned on at the order of the pilot instructor. Both engines were on in the seconds after the explosion.

"No sound was heard from the passenger cabin at that moment... The recording stopped after 19 seconds."

No details of the cockpit conversation were disclosed.

Iran had delayed releasing the plane's "black box" voice recorder but in July sent it to France for examination.

No other parties involved in the black box analysis have yet commented.

What happened to Flight PS752?

On 8 January, at 06:12 local time (02:42 GMT), UIA flight PS752 took off from Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran.

The plane was a Boeing 737-800 - one of the international airline industry's most widely used aircraft models.

Before leaving the airport's air space, the plane appeared to turn around to return to the runway. Shortly afterwards, it crashed.

The government in Tehran initially said the UIA plane had suffered a technical problem shortly after take-off. It cited witnesses including the crew of another passenger plane who said it had been on fire prior to impact.

Authorities said they had lost radar contact when the plane was at an altitude of about 8,000ft (2,400m), minutes after taking off.

A later report by the CAOI said the air defence unit that targeted the passenger plane had recently moved and had failed to calibrate its equipment correctly. As a result, it misidentified the civilian plane as a hostile object.

The report also said the missile battery had been unable to communicate with their command centre, and had fired on the plane without receiving official approval.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53880254

 

[ishtiaq_ctg]

Inept is the word that comes to mind. A nuclear powered Iran will be a nightmare as Iran seems very incapable when it comes to military decision making capabilities.

 

[Firebat]

U.N. panel urges Iran to speed investigation of downed jet

(Reuters) - A governing panel at the United Nations’ aviation agency urged Iran on Friday to accelerate an investigation into the downing of a Ukrainian airliner in January, while an Iranian official said a final report on the crash would be circulated soon.

The International Civil Aviation Organization said members of its 36-nation council issued the call, nearly 10 months after a Ukraine International Airlines flight was shot down by an Iranian ground-to-air missile, killing 176 people.

“We have had several exchanges with the Iranian CAA in which we urged its authorities to expedite the accident investigation,” council president Salvatore Sciacchitano told a meeting of the committee, according to ICAO.

Iran’s representative to ICAO, however, said he had made a full report to the council on the progress of the investigation.

A draft of the final report has been completed and is being translated, Farhad Parvaresh told Reuters.

It will be sent to participating nations in “a couple of weeks,” he said, adding that Iran was adhering to international rules on air investigations known as Annex 13.

Those rules include a recommendation that the final report appears within 12 months, which in this case runs until early January, though many high-profile probes take longer.

Although the deadline has not yet been reached, some states including Canada are concerned about what they view as a lack of transparency, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has said it accidentally shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 on Jan. 8, mistaking it for a missile at a time when tensions were high between Iran and the United States.

Canada and families of the victims are pressing Iran for additional answers following an initial report on the contents of black boxes, which were sent to France for analysis in July.

Many of the 176 victims killed in the crash were Canadian citizens or permanent residents.

Ukraine, where the Boeing 737 was operated, and the United States, where it was designed and built, are automatically part of any formal accident investigation under ICAO rules.

The rules say any participating nations should be given 60 days to make comments before the final report can be published.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...eed-investigation-of-downed-jet-idUSKBN27M2YG

 

[Firebat]

Ukraine says Iran dragging its feet in plane crash investigation

KYIV (Reuters) - Ukraine has said Iran is dragging its feet on investigating the downing of a Ukrainian airliner near Tehran in January by not sharing information and not responding to requests for cooperation.

Iran has also rejected Kyiv’s calls for life sentences for those responsible, Deputy Prosecutor General Gyunduz Mamedov told Reuters on Thursday, in written comments ahead of a third round of talks on the crash next month.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards say they shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 by accident on Jan. 8, mistaking it for a missile at a time when tensions with the United States were high; Washington had killed Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Soleimani five days earlier with a drone strike in Iraq.

Many of the 176 people killed in the crash were Canadian citizens or permanent residents.

Iranian officials, who could not be reached on Friday, the weekend in Iran, have in the past blamed delays in the investigation on technical issues as well as the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Our preliminary legal assessment of the tragedy is a particularly grave crime, where the killing of 176 civilians took place using military equipment,” Mamedov said.

“The maximum punishment is life imprisonment, compensation payments to the victims and to airlines for the destroyed plane. This position of ours is unacceptable for Iran, but they do nothing to provide us with details and facts for a different classification of the crime.”

Mamedov said Ukraine would pursue a “parallel path” if its demands were not met, without specifying what that meant.

He said Iran had not responded to requests for joint investigative actions or for permission to contact Iranian military prosecutors directly.

A governing panel at the United Nations’ aviation agency urged Iran last week to accelerate its investigation, while an Iranian official said a final report on the crash would be circulated soon.

Mamedov said he wanted to see results at the next round of talks on Dec. 3.

“We still do not have an official documented position from Iran,” he said. “They don’t say ‘no’, but their ‘yes’ does not bring a development.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...et-in-plane-crash-investigation-idUSKBN27T1OX

 

[Firebat]

Iran's probe into downing of airliner has major flaws -Canada report

OTTAWA (Reuters) -Iran is not conducting its investigation into the downing of a civilian airliner in January properly and many questions remain unanswered, an independent Canadian report into the tragedy said on Tuesday.

The 79-page document is the latest expression of frustration from Western nations into how the Islamic Republic is handling the aftermath of a disaster that claimed 176 lives.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards say they accidentally shot down the Ukraine International Airlines plane shortly after take-off, mistaking it for a missile when tensions with the United States were high. Many of the victims were Canadian citizens or permanent residents.

Former Canadian cabinet minister Ralph Goodale, charged with helping the victims’ families and examining how to deal with similar disasters in future, said “many of the key details of this horrific event” remain unknown.

“Iran...has not conducted its investigations (safety, criminal or otherwise) in a truly independent, objective and transparent manner, and answers to critical questions” are absent, he wrote in the report.

Last month the United Nations aviation agency and Ukraine complained separately about how Iran was conducting the probe.

“There’s not much of a track record to base any optimism on so far,” Goodale said by phone when asked about the chances of Tehran carrying out a fully transparent investigation.

Just before the disaster, Iran had fired missiles at U.S. bases in Iraq. Five days earlier, the United States had killed a Revolutionary Guards commander in Iraq.

Goodale said Iran needed to explain how it had assessed the risks to civilian aircraft, why it had left the airspace open and also why the Guards had decided to down the plane.

Canada and other nations who lost citizens are pressing Iran for reparations and a formal apology.

“Canada just has to be absolutely relentless...to make sure the international community does not forget what happened,” said Goodale.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...r-has-major-flaws-canada-report-idUSKBN28P2G5

 

[Gabbar Singh]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Iran sets $150,000 compensation for Ukrainian Airlines victims <a href="https://t.co/lF0l0Xme3E">https://t.co/lF0l0Xme3E</a> <a href="https://t.co/K73QfaO4jL">pic.twitter.com/K73QfaO4jL</a></p>— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) <a href="https://twitter.com/AJEnglish/status/1344305768938528778?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 30, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

[Last Monetarist]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-crash-ukraine/iran-indicts-10-over-ukraine-plane-crash-prosecutor-says-canada-demands-justice-idUSKBN2BT120?il=0

Iran has indicted 10 officials over the shooting-down of a Ukrainian passenger plane in January 2020 that killed all 176 people on board, a military prosecutor said on Tuesday.

In a report published last month, Iran’s civil aviation body blamed the crash on a misaligned radar and an error by an air defence operator. Ukraine and Canada, home to many of those who died, criticised the report as insufficient.

“Indictments have been issued for 10 officials involved in the crash of the Ukrainian plane... and necessary decisions will be taken in court,” Gholam Abbas Torki, the outgoing military prosecutor for Tehran province, was quoted as saying by the semi-official news agency ISNA. He did not give further details.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards shot down the Ukraine International Airlines flight on Jan. 8, 2020, shortly after it took off from a Tehran Airport.

The Iranian government later said the shooting-down was a “disastrous mistake” by its forces at a time when they were on high alert in a regional confrontation with the United States.

Iran was on edge about possible attacks after it fired missiles at Iraqi bases housing U.S. forces in retaliation for the killing days before of its most powerful military commander, Qassem Soleimani, in a U.S. missile strike at Baghdad airport.

 

[Last Monetarist]

https://www.reuters.com/world/iran-ready-bilateral-talks-downed-jet-ignores-call-reparations-2022-01-07/

Iran said on Friday it was prepared to hold bilateral talks with concerned countries over a Ukrainian airliner downed by its forces in 2020, ignoring a joint statement on reparations made by Canada and other states whose citizens were killed.

Canada, Britain, Sweden and Ukraine said on Thursday they had abandoned efforts to talk to Tehran about reparations for an airliner brought down by Iran and would try to settle the matter according to international law.

Most of the 176 people killed when Iran shot down the Ukrainian airliner in January 2020 were citizens from those four nations, which formed a group aiming to hold Tehran to account.

"Despite certain countries' illegal actions and attempts to exploit this tragic event ..., Iran remains ready to negotiate bilaterally with each of the relevant states," Iran's Foreign Ministry said in a statement on state media.

It said any talks should respect "sovereignty, domestic laws and international obligations".

Tehran says its Revolutionary Guards accidentally shot down the Boeing 737 plane, which was hit at a time when tensions were high between Iran and the United States. Tehran blamed a misaligned radar and an error by the air defence operator.

A Canadian court this week awarded nearly $84 million plus interest to the families of six people who died. In June, Canada said it had found no evidence that the downing of the plane had been premeditated.

 

[MenInG]

A group of four countries led by Canada has requested that Iran submit to arbitration to settle a dispute over its shooting down of a Ukrainian jet.

Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 was hit by two missiles after taking off from Tehran on 8 January 2020. All 176 people on board died.

Three days later, Iran admitted mistakenly shooting down the plane.

The group, made up of Canada, Sweden, Ukraine and the UK, said it was taking "concrete action" against Iran.

The four nations have been seeking reparations on behalf of the families of the victims - many of whom were citizens or residents of those countries.

They accuse Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of having "unlawfully and intentionally" launched two surface-to-air missiles at the jet.

Iran, for its part, said its air defences had been on high alert at the time of the incident after it fired ballistic missiles at two Iraqi military bases hosting US forces amid heightened tensions with the US.

In a joint statement released on Wednesday, the four countries "requested that Iran submits to binding arbitration of the dispute related to the downing of Flight PS752" under a 1971 multilateral treaty on threats to civil aviation.

It said the group remained "committed to pursuing efforts to hold Iran accountable for its multiple breaches of its international legal obligations".

BBC

 

[daytrader]

Iran issues prison sentences for 2020 downing of Ukraine airliner
Iran has said the suspects include missile defence personnel who made a ‘disastrous mistake’.

Iran’s judiciary has announced prison sentences for 10 unnamed people it says were responsible for the downing of a Ukraine International Airlines commercial flight in January 2020.

The prime suspect in the case, identified only as the commander of the Tor-M1 surface-to-air missile defence system that shot down the plane with two missiles, received a 10-year discretionary sentence for not heeding orders and three years for being “accessory to semi-intentional murder”, according to the official judiciary news site.

The unnamed individual will serve a maximum of 10 years in prison, minus time served, and must pay compensation to the families of the 176 victims of the flight, it said.

Additionally, two personnel who were operating the missile system each received one-year sentences, while other officials in Tehran’s air defence controls and the aerospace division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were given sentences ranging from one to three years.

The suspects will also reportedly face more punishments that were not specified by the judiciary.

All sentences – issued after 20 court sessions – were preliminary and can be appealed. A military court has also been ordered to continue investigations for other individuals who may have been involved.

According to the judiciary, the case involved 117 plaintiffs, 55 of whom testified in court and were represented by 20 attorneys.

Flight PS752 departed from the Imam Khomeini International Airport in the Iranian capital in the early morning of January 8, 2020 and was shot down minutes after taking off. Iranian authorities initially denied that the plane was shot down but admitted to the “disastrous mistake” three days later.

‘Human error’
Iran’s final report on the downing of the flight said “human error” was the cause since the air defence battery personnel fired the missiles without first obtaining proper clearance from higher commanders, believing that a missile was about to hit Tehran.

The incident occurred shortly after the IRGC fired missiles at two United States bases in neighbouring Iraq in retaliation for the assassination of top IRGC commander General Qassem Soleimani by a US drone.

...
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023...-announced-prison-sentences-for-10-unnamed-pe