Canada among nations taking Iran to top UN court over flight PS752 downing – National | 24CA News
The United Kingdom, Canada, Sweden and Ukraine launched a case towards Iran on the United Nations’ highest court docket Wednesday over the downing in 2020 of a Ukrainian passenger jet and the deaths of all 176 passengers and crew.
The 4 international locations need the International Court of Justice to rule that Iran illegally shot down the Ukraine International Airlines airplane and to order Tehran to apologize and pay compensation to the households of the victims.
Flight PS752 was touring from Tehran to Kyiv on Jan. 8, 2020 when it was shot down quickly after takeoff. The folks killed included nationals and residents of Canada, Sweden, Ukraine and the United Kingdom, in addition to Afghanistan and Iran. Their ages ranged from one 12 months to 74 years outdated.
“Today’s legal action reflects our unwavering commitment to achieving transparency, justice and accountability for the families of the victims,” the international locations stated in a joint assertion Wednesday. They stated they filed the case after Iran failed to answer a December request for arbitration.
Following three days of denials in In January 2020, Iran stated its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard mistakenly downed the Ukrainian airplane with two surface-to-air missiles. Iranian authorities blamed an air protection operator who they stated mistook the Boeing 737-800 for an American cruise missile.
An Iranian court docket this 12 months sentenced an air protection commander allegedly liable for the downing to 13 years imprisonment, in response to the nation’s official judiciary news outlet.
But the international locations that filed the case with the world court docket in The Hague known as the prosecution “a sham and opaque trial.”
According to the court docket submitting printed Wednesday, the U.Ok., Canada, Sweden and Ukraine argue that Iran “failed to take all practicable measures to prevent the unlawful and intentional commission of an offense” and “failed to conduct an impartial, transparent, and fair criminal investigation and prosecution consistent with international law.”
The submitting alleges that Iran withheld or destroyed proof, blamed different international locations and low degree Revolutionary Guard personnel, “threatened and harassed the families of the victims seeking justice” and did not report particulars of the incident to the International Civil Aviation Organization.
The downing occurred on the identical day Iran launched a ballistic missile assault on U.S. troops in Iraq in retaliation for an American drone strike that killed a prime Iranian normal.
Last week, Iran filed a case towards Canada linked to the downing, accusing the North American nation of flouting state immunity in permitting kin of terrorism victims to hunt reparations from the Islamic Republic.
© 2023 The Canadian Press
