Boeing shot down in Iran: Iran "lies", say UN investigators
The Ukrainian company's Boeing 707 crashed in Iran after being hit by missiles on January 8, 2020. Reuters
Text by: Jérémie Lanche
5 mins
More than a year after having shot down, officially "by mistake", a plane of Ukraine International Airlines over Tehran, the explanations provided by Iran do not convince the experts of the United Nations.
They denounce an attempt to cover up the truth and question the accidental nature of the missile fire that caused the crash.
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From our correspondent in Geneva
Three days after the tragedy, Iran
explained
that it took the Boeing for an American missile, in full military tension with the United States after the assassination in Iraq of the powerful Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.
Except that gray areas remain.
And that Tehran does nothing to dispel them.
Worse: the explanations of the Iranian authorities "
add to the confusion
" according to the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Agnès Callamard, and the rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran, Javaid Rehman, the two experts independents responsible for investigating the tragedy.
In a 45-page letter sent to the Iranian government in December and just made public, they dismantle point by point the line of defense of the authorities.
For example, the Revolutionary Guard unit behind the shooting claimed that it had only "
10 seconds
" to make its decision.
False answer the investigators, who estimate that the soldiers had 45 seconds, if not more, to realize that it was about a civilian plane.
Missile misalignment would also be involved.
But Iran "
has not explained the reason for this bad radar calibration, and why it led to target
[the Boeing]".
For Agnès Callamard, “
Iran's explanations do not hold water: they are full of contradictions and are contradicted by the facts and by technical analyzes.
[…] I interviewed dozens of experts, soldiers at all levels.
And they do not understand either why these basic procedures were not followed, whether it is at the level of the visual approach or the instruction on the radars ".
On January 8, 2020, two missiles, 30 seconds apart, struck Ukraine International Airlines flight PS 752, whose cabin then crashed in a field near Tehran.
176 people were killed: 169 passengers, mostly Iranians and Canadians, as well as 9 crew members.
According to UN investigators, if Iran feared a US strike, it should have closed its airspace.
If Iran had done so, "
176 people would not have been killed
."
Under international law, Iran has thus failed in its duty to protect the “right to life” of victims.
Responsibilities at all levels
But
the reaction of the authorities after the tragedy
also
calls
out.
Iran took three days to admit the missile fire.
Meanwhile, bulldozers ruthlessly searched the crash site, "
jeopardizing attempts to understand its true cause
."
Iran has also obstructed the repatriation of the bodies of
Canadian victims
and threatened other families of victims who have been erected as "
martyrs
".
As for the
spontaneous demonstrations
that followed across the country to demand that all light be shed on the causes of the tragedy, they were severely repressed.
Hundreds of demonstrators were arrested and questioned, while telephone and internet services were cut.
The security forces did not hesitate to fire live ammunition at the demonstrators, sometimes aimed "
directly at the head
".
At the beginning of the month, another element came to stir up trouble.
Canadian public media have revealed the existence of a recording, attributed by CBC Radio Canada to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohamad Javad Zarif, in which he suggests that the missile fire may well have been premeditated.
The truth about the crash "
will never be revealed
" can we hear him say.
The authorities "
won't tell us, or anyone else, because if they do, it will open the doors to the national defense system, and it's not in the country's interest
."
Canadian intelligence services have yet to confirm the authenticity of the recording.
“
Why is Iran lying?
Instinctively, we say to ourselves that it is because they want to hide something that there is perhaps much more serious,
”asks Agnès Callamard.
Iran has conducted its own investigation.
At least three people were reportedly arrested by the authorities.
But their identities have not been communicated, nor even the reasons for their arrests.
In April 2020, a religious official even said that “
contrary to official information, no one had been arrested
” in connection with the crash.
Experts doubt that three individuals alone could be responsible for the death of the 176 people on board flight PS 752. For Agnès Callamard, the list of those responsible is undoubtedly much wider.
“
It is first for the Iranian state to recognize its responsibility.
But that's not really what we've seen yet.
"
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