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FOREWORD
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
cooperate with Ukraine on the level of collecting and processing some information. Progress and cooperation, by all accounts, has been frustratingly slow.
Meanwhile, the Canadian Prime Minister’s Special Advisor, the Honorable Ralph Goodale, published his report in December 2020, which was Canada’s response to this atrocity. Mr. Goodale’s report posed questions that the Islamic Republic of Iran must answer. Shortly thereafter, Dr. Agnès Callamard, the United Nations former Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, published a more detailed analysis in her February 2021 report, finding that Iran flagrantly breached the human rights of the passengers of Flight PS752, including their right to life, by failing to take almost any reasonable step to protect them. In addition to the human rights infractions, Dr. Callamard’s report further shed light on the legal aspects of the case. Many unanswered questions were also set out in her report, but Iran refused to respond to them at the time—much like their reaction to those posed by Mr. Goodale. Human Rights Watch, an international non-governmental organization, published a report in the spring of 2021 that further emphasized the extensive human rights breaches of the government of Iran, which continues to claim thousands of innocent victims. Unfortunately, the report published by Canada’s Forensic Team in June 2021 not only failed to reveal the truth or even parts thereof, but it also led to further questions.
Many experts believe that Iran’s claim that their Tor-M1 Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) system was misaligned by 105 degrees, along with a multitude of other critical “mistakes”, are highly unlikely and fundamentally false. Instead, these claims seem to be part of an attempt to deceive the public and contain responsibility at the level of errors of low-level military officials. The victims’ families believe that the affected countries have a responsibility to pursue and discover the truth behind this heinous crime through all available means. How and why were their citizens murdered?
Immediately after the downing of Flight PS752, Canada proactively engaged the affected countries by forming the “International Coordination and Response Group.” This was an effort to unify the parties towards transparency, accountability, and justice. The Association continues to support this initiative as long as the victims’ families remain at the forefront of the decision-making process. The Association firmly believes that the only path to justice is through an impartial, international tribunal that is protected from the Islamic Republic of Iran’s distortions.
Over the past 43 years, the government of Iran has committed countless crimes with impunity both domestically and internationally. Many tragic examples such as Zahra Kazemi, Kavous Seyed Emami, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, Ahmadreza Jalali, Niloufar Bayani and Anousheh Ashouri clearly demonstrate the Islamic Republic’s modus operandi. Hundreds of government sanctioned assassinations on foreign soil only add to the severity of the problem. It is based on this historic evidence that the families insist on the importance of forming an impartial, international tribunal to deal with such matters and hold the Islamic Republic accountable.
Canada introduced its “Safer Skies Initiative” in order to address the many shortcomings in international law and ICAO regulations that the downing of Flight PS752 has revealed: country that shoots down a civilian airliner cannot be trusted to investigate the incident, especially a government like Iran’s that places no value on transparency or human life. There is a fundamental conflict of interest here that the applicable international law fails to address. Furthermore, and in an effort to enhance the legal path forward for the victims of Flight PS752, the Canadian
government appointed the renowned international law professor, Payam Akhavan, as a senior legal advisor in respect of this issue.
Canada designated January 8 as the National Day of Remembrance for Victims of Air Disasters, an initiative welcomed by the families. Since January 8, 2020, the Canadian government has actively engaged with the families and with the cooperation of the Association, facilitated consular services to process visas and other related cases to support the victims’ families. Canada also initiated several scholarship programs in honour of the many victims who were students, academics, and researchers in Canadian institutions.
Over the past 22 months, the victims’ families have been inundated with various forms of support from the community and generous human beings around the world. Official organizations and individual experts such as law firms, technical experts, researchers, and many others have volunteered their services to the Association. These heartwarming expressions of solidarity have been a source of energy for all of us.
The Association of Families of Flight PS752 Victims is a community-based organization founded by the families of victims of Flight PS752. While we are grateful for the cooperation received from other governments, we are frustrated by the limited progress achieved to date. Governments like that of Canada’s have produced several reports in respect of Flight PS752, but they are limited in nature. We have established a broad network of supporters in Iran, Europe, and North America, and we have actively engaged that network in accumulating evidence and documentation from a wide variety of sources, including publicly available information, information from technical experts offering to contribute their expertise, and information conveyed confidentially by individuals in Iran. After recognizing the incomplete fact-finding in other reports published in respect of Flight PS752, the Association decided to compile and publish its own findings. It seeks to cover the various aspects of this crime, study similar examples and leave the readers to draw their own conclusions as to what happened in the morning of January 8, 2020. We do not yet have all of the answers. This report includes important evidence not considered by other authorities.
The families of the victims of Flight PS752 are resolute in finding the truth and seeking justice. The hope remains that the governments of various affected countries such as Canada, Ukraine, Sweden, and the UK proceed with more seriousness and utilize all available means, including the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC), to bring the perpetrators of this crime to justice.
