Politic?: Iran's Deliberate Lack of Accountability : Murder of 176 Aboard Ukraine Flight PS752

"[While] the existing international rules-based system [of international aviation rules] works well and serves the intended purpose to uncover what happened and improve aviation safety, [the shooting down of Flight PS752 is different because] military activity is the cause."
"Investigating a crash that results from a mechanical failure, a design flaw, bad weather, pilot error and so forth is not the same as investigating a military shoot-down. The existing system is not well suited to handle the latter."
"In the case of a military shoot-down, that means the very government involved in causing the disaster [Iran in this case] is in complete control of the safety investigation, obvious conflicts of interest notwithstanding, with few safeguards to ensure independence, impartiality or legitimacy."
"This undermines the investigation's credibility and enables a sense of impunity in avoiding essential questions. The ability of the international community to implement effective measures to prevent similar disasters is thus impaired."
"The capacity of the international community and the ability of the victims of the disaster to win any kind of accountability from the regime it should go without saying, are also rather impaired."
"Our Western democratic approach to human rights, the rule of law, investigative and judicial independence, due process, transparency and accountability is antithetical to Iran's. Iran is identified in Canadian law as a state supporter of terrorism. The Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC] and several other surrogates are listed under our Criminal Code as terrorist entities."
Flight PS752: The long road to transparency accountability and justice. Ralph Goodale, report

Rescue workers search the scene where an Ukrainian plane crashed in Shahedshahr, southwest of the capital Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

It is almost a year ago that the IRGC shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet with 176 passengers and crew aboard. Two missiles hit the jet which had just lifted off from an airport near the capital Tehran en route to Ukraine as its first stop, its ultimate destination Canada. All aboard Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS52 perished. Among the passengers were 55 Canadian citizens, as well as another 81 permanent residents, students and others linked to Canada. There were also Iranian citizens, citizens of Afghanistan, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and Sweden aboard the flight.

For days after the downing of the passenger jet the Islamic Republic of Iran refuted accusations that it was involved in the shoot-down. Officially the precise cause of the missile strikes have failed to be established. Iran has used every delaying tactic it possibly could, first in denying it was in any way involved, and later interminably delaying the handover of the recovered black boxes and other evidence to France whose laboratories were equipped to decipher the electronic data relevant to the missile hits and subsequent explosion.

That international aviation rules permit Iran itself to officially investigate the event itself, in the face of its delaying, evasive tactics and the denial of involvement in the disaster, represents a miscarriage of justice before any of the critical questions surrounding the event can even be answered, and the investigation brought to a reasonable conclusion, bringing closure to the bereaved families of the victims. Iranian-Canadians whose family members' lives were destroyed in that crash demand answers and none are forthcoming. Iranians themselves protested and were summarily violently dispersed.

Iran's initial investigation concluded that 'human error' was involved in the shooting of two missiles by an IRGC commander at the airliner a few minutes after takeoff from the airport. The report by Goodale gave short shrift to the 'human error' causation, referring instead to "indications of incompetence, recklessness and wanton disregard for innocent human life". By happenstance a conversation between a victim's relative and the senior Iranian investigator, Hassan Rezaeifar had been recorded. The investigator as good as threatened the Canadian for his inconvenient demands for accountability of the death of his family member.

What was divulged in that recorded conversation was a candid admission that there was deliberation in leaving Iranian airspace open to civilian flights at a time when the IRGC was busy shooting missiles into Iraq at U.S. bases in retaliation for the assassination of the IRGC's senior commander Qasem Soleimani by an American drone strike a few days before. The skies over Tehran remained open to civilian air traffic for the purpose of concealing the retaliatory missile strikes on U.S. targets.

Earlier in the day other passenger jets had taken off without incident. Allowing civilian planes to depart at a time when Iran was employing missile attacks directed toward Iraq meant they were being used as detection shields. A familiar ploy commonly utilized by the proxy Iranian terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah who often fire rockets and other missiles from civilian sites, similarly using civilian areas as shields whom return strikes penalize.

The police state of theocratic Iran plays by its own rules, while professing to honour international rules of conduct, just as its justice system bears little resemblance to that of democratic nations of the world, as well as non-democratic nations that have a true regard for what constitutes justice. "The party responsible for the situation is investigating itself, largely in secret. That does not inspire confidence of trust", wrote Goodale in his report. None of the countries involved; Sweden, Afghanistan, Ukraine, the United Kingdom or Canada had any confidence that Iran's behaviour would be honourably disposed to the truth, in any event.

Canada is clearly naive in demanding 'accountability' from Iran, even in claiming that it is acting in tandem with the other countries whose nationals were also victim of the shooting down of the Ukrainian airliner. Iran is defiant and elusive, totally disinterested in what outside entities, be they other governments of other nations, human rights groups or UN-linked investigations urge it to do. It has its own self-interested rules of engagement and its own national justice protocols having little to do with justice as it is known in other jurisdictions. It is a law unto itself.

Stemming from the ultimate authority: Iran's very own special brand of Islam.

"The report is significant in a number of ways that bring Iran’s claims into serious question and demand Iran to be transparent about the truth. Mr. Goodale raises a multitude of questions that Iran must answer – questions that render Iran’s claims of human error being the cause of the downing effectively implausible. It also brings to light Iran’s suspect behaviour in the aftermath of the downing, including the hurried destruction of the crash site, withholding of the black boxes for half a year, intimidations of the victims' families, and failure to provide any evidence for its claims in the four interim reports thus far. Furthermore, the report points to the obvious flaws in the current investigation process that have reduced the much-needed technical investigations into an absurd self-investigation by the armed forces that shot down the aircraft."
Statement From The Association of Victims’ Families of Flight PS752 in Response to Special Advisor Ralph Goodale’s Report