Several relatives of the Iranian victims of a commercial flight shot down in Iran in January 2020 by missiles fired by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) have withdrawn their complaint from the Tehran Military Court, accusing it of being “a disgrace to the truth” and being at the orders of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 crashed on January 8, 2020, while en route to Kyiv, killing all 176 people onboard. Besides Iranians, there were Afghan, British, Canadian, Swedish, and Ukrainian citizens on board.
After days of official denials, Iran admitted that an IRGC unit had inadvertently shot down the plane amid heightened tensions with the United States over the U.S. drone assassination of top IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani near Baghdad.
Abbas Sadeghi, a lawyer and a family member of four of the victims, released a video message in which he said: “The most painful humiliation of the truth takes place in this court. That’s why we withdrew our complaint on February 12.”
“We believe that the court has neither the competence nor the will to handle this case independently and impartially,” Sadeghi added.
Sadeghi said that Iran had deployed a missile system in the vicinity of the path followed by international flights, and, “for this reason, we believe that this crime was intentional, and we have no doubts about it.”
The Iranian government says it has allocated $150,000 to compensate the family of each passenger, regardless of citizenship, but some families have refused the money.
Last year, a Canadian court awarded $84 million plus interest to the families of six of the victims.
Source » rferl