HRW : Ukraine Airline victims families abused and exhausted
The Human Rights Watch reported that Iranian authorities have engaged during a campaign of harassment and abuse against families of individuals killed within the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s (IRGC) downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 in January 2020.
The authorities indicted 10 people for his or her role within the incident but haven’t provided any public information about their identities, ranks, or the fees against them.
Governments participating within the Flight 752 investigation should support relations of victims in pursuing a path for justice and accountability, said HRW.
The organization interviewed 31 relations of victims and other people with direct knowledge from October 2020 to January 2021. They said that Iran’s security agencies had arbitrarily detained, summoned, abusively interrogated, tortured, and otherwise mistreated victims’ relations .
The agencies also did not return victims’ possessions to their relatives and interfered with burial and memorial gatherings in a clear plan to curtail efforts for accountability.
HRW deputy Middle East director Michael Page said that IRGC killed 176 people without a shred of accountability, and now Iran’s brutal security agencies are abusing victims’ relations to squash any hope for justice.
“Rather than attempting to regain people’s trust through a transparent investigation and redress for the families, the authorities are again silencing accountability efforts.”
On January 8, 2020, the Ukrainian plane was downed near Tehran’s Imam Khomeini international airport. After several initial denials, the soldiers Central Command admitted on January 11 that IRGC had “mistakenly” shot down the passenger jet, killing all 176 passengers and crew on board.
Iranian authorities said that “human error” by a missile operator led to launching two surface-to-air missiles at the plane. But they didn’t disclose critical evidence supporting the claim and haven’t provided any details of their judicial investigation.
The cabinet announced that it had allocated $150,000 to compensate the family of every passenger.
On St Patrick’s Day , Iran’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Board published its final report on the incident during which it said, supported information provided by the military, that Iranian missiles were launched at the plane because of a 105-degree miscalibration of the launcher’s radar.
The report didn’t clarify inconsistencies within the Iranian government’s findings raised by various independent observers, including the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions during a detailed letter to the Iranian government in December.
The foreign affairs and transport ministers of Canada, the intended destination of most of the passengers, indicated that the report makes no plan to answer critical questions on what truly happened. “It appears incomplete and has no hard facts or evidence.”
On May 20, a Canadian court ruled during a civil lawsuit that “on the balance of probabilities, the missile attacks on Flight 752 were intentional and directly caused the deaths of all on board.”
After Iranian authorities admitted they shot down the plane, protests broke call at several Iranian cities, and security forces responded with rubber bullets, aerosol , and tear gas.
Over the past year, courts have sentenced in any case 20 people in reference to their participation in protests. in any case three more participants are currently unproved .
At least 16 people said that security agencies threatened them to not participate in interviews with foreign media or had followed or summoned their relatives or friends who attended memorials and filmed those attending these events.
In some cases, security forces interrogated or detained relations for several hours, and in in any case one case, the authorities tortured any individual in custody.
In another case, plainclothes officers asked to satisfy a loved one who had spoken against authorities’ conduct at a public place and threatened that person with prosecution.
Several of these interviewed said that the authorities returned important documents from the victims, but didn’t return any valuables, like jewelry and electronic devices.
Videos and photos published two days after the crash show bulldozers demolishing the location before authorities had accepted responsibility for downing the plane, raising concerns that they did not secure evidence that was then destroyed or left unusable for investigations or legal proceedings.
