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FOREWORD On January 8, 2020, 176 passengers and crew, and one unborn child on board Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 lost their lives. Flight PS752 crashed nearly 6 minutes after takeoff from Tehran’s International Airport. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) of Iran brought down the aircraft by firing at least two missiles at it. I lost my wife, Parisa Eghbalian, and my nine-year-old daughter, Reera Esmaeilion. The effects of this calamity were felt all around the world. Iran and five other countries lost citizens—Canada, Ukraine, Sweden, Afghanistan, and the United Kingdom. 138 of the passengers had close ties with Canada; fifty-five were Canadian citizens, thirty were permanent residents, and many others were studying at universities and other education centers in Canada, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Great Britain. Initially, the Islamic Republic of Iran issued a blanket denial of wrongdoing and claimed that the Ukrainian airliner crashed as a result of technical failures. In the face of mounting undeniable evidence of a shootdown, the government of Iran pivoted on their narrative and claimed that the missiles were fired by the IRGC as a result of “human error”. Iran hoped that the victims’ families would accept that narrative of human error, with no evidence, and accept the title of “martyr” for their lost loved ones, claiming those killed died for the Islamic Republic of Iran and obscuring that they were killed by Iran. Iran hoped that the families of victims would line up to receive financial compensation from the hands of the government that had killed their loved ones and move on. The Islamic Republic of Iran was wrong. The families of the victims were adamant to find answers and would not accept lies. Iran’s government has made several attempts to undermine the truth by publishing highly flawed reports that leave almost all relevant questions unanswered, culminating in an incomplete and flawed “final report” published in March 2020. While there are many questions that remain unanswered from those reports, and investigation of Iran’s military— which launched the missiles—was deemed outside the scope of the report, Iran’s incomplete reports also gave rise to many more questions that need to be answered. All the while, the government of Iran’s judiciary was preparing an indictment to initiate legal proceedings domestically to control information about the incident. This took place while all access to witnesses and evidence were blocked. Anyone who attempted to disclose any evidence was persecuted. There was no sign of the truth in Iran’s technical or judicial reports. The evidence that the government of Iran provided in support of their “human error” theory remains contrived, misleading, self-serving, and unsubstantiated. The survivors of the tragedy demanded that the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the affected states initiate technical and criminal investigations. The ICAO could have participated in managing the technical aspects but refused to engage. By establishing a “Forensic Team”, the Canadian government promised the families to disclose the truth—or at least some of it. A criminal investigation was initiated by the Ukrainian government but as of time of the publication of this document, the families are not privy to the details of such proceedings. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) refused to directly participate in, or help with, Ukraine’s criminal investigations through a possible joint investigation and, instead, decided to
