Multiple countries call upon Iran to take responsibility for 2020 plane downing amid anniversary

Several governments have called on Iran to accept full legal responsibility for the downing of Boeing 737-800 passenger plane in 2020 on the eve of the tragedy's fifth anniversary. 

Officials from those countries whose citizens were on the tragic Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 have made renewed pleas after Tehran has already admitted that the plane was mistakenly targeted by an air defense operator shortly after departing Tehran, Caliber.Az reports citing Ukrainian media. 

"Iran brutally violated a number of rules of international law: it used weapons against a civil aircraft in flight, failed to take all practicable measures to prevent the downing, and failed to ensure either a transparent and objective investigation into the circumstances of the crash or proper prosecution of the accused persons," a statement by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry reads. 

Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard also joined her Ukrainian counterpart's appeal, after Sweden, together with Ukraine, Canada and the United Kingdom, initiated proceedings within the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organisation against Iran for breaching the 1944 Convention on International Civil Aviation.

As Caliber.Az recalls, the passenger plane en route from Tehran to Kyiv was shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on January 8, 2020 who mistook it for an American missile. All of the 176 people on board, most of which were primarily Iranians en route to Canada, were killed in the crash.

The incident occurred in the midst of renewed heightened tensions between Iran and the US as the high-profile assassination of Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani through an American drone strike occurred only a couple of days before the plane tragedy. Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei back then responded to the tragedy after the military's admission by defending the IRGC, saying that the bitter tragedy should not “overshadow the martyrdom of our great commander [Qassem] Soleimani.”

By Nazrin Sadigova