Iran said suspects include missile defense personnel who made a “catastrophic mistake”.
Iran’s judiciary has announced jail sentences for 10 unnamed people they say were responsible for the crash of a Ukraine International Airlines airliner in January 2020.
The prime suspect in the case, identified only as the commander of the Tor M1 surface-to-air missile defense system that shot down the plane with two missiles, received a 10-year discretionary sentence for disobeying orders and three years for failing to “aid to.” semi-deliberate murder,” according to the official news site of the judiciary.
The unnamed person will serve a maximum of 10 years in prison less time served and must pay compensation to the families of the 176 escape victims, it said.
In addition, two employees who operated the missile system were each sentenced to one-year prison terms, while other officials from Tehran’s Air Defense Control and Aerospace Branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were sentenced to between one and three years in prison.
The suspects will also reportedly face other sentences that have not been determined by the judiciary.
All judgments – issued after 20 court hearings – were provisional and can be appealed. A military court was also ordered to continue investigating others who may have been involved.
According to the judiciary, 117 plaintiffs were involved in the case, of whom 55 testified in court and 20 were represented by lawyers.
Flight PS752 took off from Imam Khomeini International Airport in the Iranian capital in the early morning of January 8, 2020 and was shot down minutes after takeoff. Iranian authorities initially denied the plane was shot down, but three days later acknowledged the “catastrophic error.”
‘Human error’
Iran’s final report on the plane’s downing says “human error” was the cause, as air defense battery personnel fired the missiles without first obtaining proper approval from senior commanders, believing a missile would hit Tehran would.
The incident came shortly after the IRGC fired missiles at two US bases in neighboring Iraq in retaliation for the assassination of IRGC Supreme Commander General Qassem Soleimani by a US drone.
Sunday’s judiciary report also backed that narrative, saying staff failed to calibrate the defense system after it was moved shortly before the incident and ignored instructions to seek direct clearance to fire during that night’s chaos as the Iran anticipated a possible US attack.
However, a number of the victims’ families, as well as officials in Ukraine and Canada – who counted dozens of citizens among the passengers killed – have condemned Iran for what they call a lack of transparency and cooperation.
A Canadian court ruled in 2021 that the shooting down was an “act of terrorism,” although Tehran claims the case was politicized. Another court also granted some of the families tens of millions of dollars that could be taken from Iranian assets in Canada.
The Iranian government set a $150,000 compensation for each of the victims’ families in late 2020 and later said payments had started, but it was unclear how much had been paid.