Iran committed human rights violations in shooting down Ukrainian plane, UN says
The Iranian military committed multiple human rights violations when it killed 176 people by shooting down a Ukrainian plane in January 2020, the United Nations said Tuesday.
Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard downed Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 on Jan. 8, 2020, shortly after it took off from Tehran en route to Kyiv.
Iran initially denied shooting down the plane but admitted to it Jan. 10 and reportedly arrested an undisclosed number of people less than a week after the disaster. The UN investigation could not confirm those arrests.
The plane shooting came days after the U.S. killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in an airstrike in Baghdad.
Iran has claimed that because international tensions were so high at the time, members of the Revolutionary Guard confused the plane for a missile and shot it in mistaken self-defense.
UN investigators found that explanation unconvincing, but also could not prove that Iran meant to kill passengers on the commercial jet.
“The inconsistencies in the official explanations seem designed to create a maximum of confusion and a minimum of clarity. They seem contrived to mislead and bewilder,” Agnes Callamard, UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said in a letter to Iran that was published Tuesday, two months after it was first sent.
Callamard said Iran has not explained how it confused a plane for a missile, nor whether it took any action to try to make such a distinction. She noted that Iran did not explain why other flights were not shot down.
The UN also called out Iran’s non-response to the crash site.
“Instead of opening a proper investigation, the authorities allowed the crash site to be looted and then bulldozed, hampering the collection of evidence and depriving families of irreplaceable mementos of those whom they had lost,” Callamard said.
Iran has not responded publicly or privately to Callamard’s letter and investigation.
