Fateful Seconds of Living Hell, Then Death

"Nineteen seconds after the first missile hit the plane, the voices of pilots inside the cockpit indicated that the passengers were alive ... 25 seconds later the second missile hit the plane."                                                                                 "Therefore, no analysis of the performance and effects of the second missile was obtained from the aircraft's black box.”                                                                 "The data analysis from the black boxes should not be politicized."                           "What is evident is that Iran has accepted the responsibility for the mistake and therefore the country is ready for negotiations on paying full compensation."       Touraj Dehghani-Zanganeh head, Iranian Civil Aviation Organization

In this file photo from January 8, 2020, authorities stand near the wreckage of a Ukraine International Airlines plane that Iran said it accidentally shot down near Imam Khomeini airport in Tehran, killing all 176 people on board. © Abedin Taherkenareh / EFE

Flight PS752 was struck when two missiles 25 seconds apart hit the plane just moments after it left Tehran's main airport on January 8, with 176 passengers and crew aboard. After initially denying that it was responsible for the downing of the passenger jet heading for Ukraine on a regular route, Tehran finally had little option given the evidence, but to admit an 'accident' had occurred and indeed members of its al Quds branch of the Revolutionary Guard Corps shot down the plane.

They had been on high alert for incoming missiles from the U.S. military it was explained and mistook the airliner for a threat. No one survived the destruction of the civilian airliner. That very night Iran had launched a ballistic missile attack against a U.S. base in Iraq, responding to a U.S. targeted drone strike killing Qassem Soleimani on January 3 in Baghdad. A great hero in Iran for his terrorist exploits against the Islamic Republic of Iran's 'enemies', his death might be seen as a preventive against further attacks such as he had engineered.

Iranian citizens demonstrated their anger at the  shooting down of the airliner with its massive loss of life by taking to the streets and vociferously blaming the regime and the IRGC. Most of the victims were Iranian civilians of whom 55 of the total were Iranian citizens of Canada, others Iranian students travelling to Canada to take up academic studies at Canadian universities. Other nations, Ukraine and France among them, lost citizens and await compensation from Iran to go to the families of the bereaved.

What is staggeringly beyond belief is that the regime's elite command military could have been so oblivious to the danger they were placing a commercial airliner and its passengers in, so consumed with its enactment of vengeance attacks they failed to take common-sense precautions, the most elemental of which would have been to close their air space to civilian aircraft at a time of such high tensions between Iran and the U.S., instead of placing so many lives in jeopardy.

Investigators at the scene of the wreckage.(AP: Ebrahim Noroozi/File)

The second missile to bring down Flight PS752 hit the aircraft mere seconds after the first had struck. the gap of time between the two hits, estimated at 19 seconds captured on the black box recordings reflecting the damage the jet sustained from the first missile hit. Difficult to contemplate is the conclusion that the passengers were all alive after the airliner was struck by the first missile. The second one that was dispatched for whatever reason, extinguished all lives. It is the brief intermission between the two strikes that expresses the horror that would have struck all aboard with the realization that their lives were over.

"Our important questions regarding the reason for the delayed takeoff and the pilot's communications within that hour, which should have been included in the report of the black boxes, have also been left conspicuously unanswered." Association of Families of Flight PS752 Victims

The flight crew of the aircraft consisting of two pilots and an instructor travelling in the cockpit had exerted a desperate, last-minute effort to maintain control of the plane -- until the last possible moment, pointed out the Iranian spokesperson. United Nations aviation rules that call for investigations whose aim is solely to prevent future accidents separate from any judicial process, represents the guidelines under which Iran's investigation is being carried out. 

The Civil Aviation Organization of Iran on Sunday published a report on the downloaded data from the Boeing 737 flight and voice recorders which emerged as a focal issue to fully comprehend the prevailing circumstances at the time Flight PS752 was shot down. According to the report released through the French investigation, the recorders had but 19 seconds of conversation following the first explosion, despite the second missile -- according to Dehqani-Zangeneh -- hitting the plane 25 seconds afterward.

Two missiles hit the plane, less than half a minute apart.(AP: Ebrahim Noroozi)

Canadian Diplomacy

"In Iran, we're told they still want to get the equipment or expertise [to examine the black boxes of the Ukraine civil airliner shot down by the IRGC in January]."
"I'm saying, well after 30 days you haven't managed to, and since the appendix says 'without delay' I interpret the spirit of the text and the law to be without delay. So what I'm telling Iran is: let the French experts do it. France has offered to analyze the black boxes."
"We are seeing the emergence of a multipolar world with new epicentres of influence and competition over ideas and models of government. Around the world, human rights are increasingly under threat."
"On behalf of the grieving nations of this tragedy, we told [the Islamic Republic Foreign] Minister [Mohammad Javad] Zarif in no certain terms that Iran must take steps toward resolving many outstanding questions of fact and of law."
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne

Soldiers carry a coffin containing the remains of one of the 11 Ukrainian victims of the Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 disaster during a memorial ceremony at the Boryspil International Airport, outside Kyiv, on Jan. 19, 2020.  Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters

On February 15, a joint committee met -- representing the nations whose citizens were killed when Iran shot two missiles on January 8 over Tehran bringing down a 3-year-old Boeing 737-800, flight 752 operated by Ukrainian International Airlines, mere minutes after it lifted off from Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had fired two anti-war missiles, killing all 176 passengers and crew aboard the passenger jet instantly. The meeting comprised of representatives of the nations whose nationals were killed issued a statement emphasizing the Islamic Republic's international obligations to respond to questions surrounding the plane's deliberate destruction.

The committee,  the "International Coordination and Response Group for victims of Flight PS752", stated its expectation that Iran would live up to its international obligations, and that the five nations involved were awaiting closure to the many unanswered questions. The crash saw the death of 82 Iranians, 57 Canadians, eleven Ukrainians, ten Swedes, four Afghans, three Germans, and three Britons, along with Iranian victims. The committee comprised of representatives of Canada, Ukraine, Germany, Britain and Afghanistan has been patient but their patience is running thin, finding it necessary to remind Iran of its unmet responsibilities.

People walk near the wreckage after a Ukrainian plane crashed near Imam Khomeini airport in Tehran early in the morning on January 8, 2020, killing everyone on board. The Boeing 737 had left Tehran's international airport bound for Kiev, semi-official news agency ISNA said, adding that 10 ambulances were sent to the crash site.

AFP via Getty Images

The meeting took place on the sidelines of the annual Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany. Tehran insists the shoot-down of the plane was the result of a misunderstanding, an unfortunate accident. But it steadfastly refuses to send the black boxes to Ukraine, to the United States or elsewhere for expert interpretation, although it is well known it has neither the equipment nor the expertise to do so on its own. Iran has tentatively offered financial compensation to the victims, as is recognized in such events, but its offer fails to reflect the seriousness of the event.

By preventing the examination of the flight records from the jetliner Iran is deliberately flouting international law. Overcoming its initial reluctance, Iran has cooperated in the repatriation of the victims' remains to their countries of origins. The many questions surrounding the 'inadvertent' shooting down of the airliner killing all aboard remain unanswered, however. The Islamic Republic's refusal to comply with Annex 13 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation ensures that those answers will not be forthcoming to the satisfactjon of the international community.

Officials inspect the wreckage of the Kyiv-bound Ukraine International Airlines jet that crashed near Tehran, killing everyone onboard. Photograph: Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA

As it happens, the International Civil Aviation Organization has its head office based in Montreal. Canada's Foreign Minister Champagne has asked the president of the ICAO to disallow "that situation to continue because we're going against international law here". Canada is polarized on pursuing its insistence that Iran respond to entirely reasonable expectations from the international community, and most specifically from the International Coordination and Response Group for victims of Flight PS752, which had demanded of Iran that it commit to the most basic of its responsibilities; the turnover of the black boxes for expert analyzing.

Riccardo Vecchio Imprints illustration for Foreign Policy

That issue has managed to slip into the background of Canada's foreign relations agenda irrespective of the fact that Canadian citizens, Iranians seeking refugee status in Canada and living in Canada with landed immigrant status pursuant to qualifying as Canadian citizens, as well as Iranian students studying in Canada who were all killed by the Iranian regime's IRGC as a result of its conflict with the United States after the assassination of the commander of the IRGC Brig.Gen.Qasem Suleimani.

The conflicting issue is the vanity project undertaken by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as his legacy, to return Canada to one of the two-year revolving United Nations Security Council seats. To which end he has fastened his attention, and dedicated time and funding in travelling to Africa to speak with leaders of countries whose vote in the United Nations he covets, leaders of countries whose human rights record is that of brutality and compromise. His diplomatic overtures are beyond naive in his willingness to overlook corrupt leaderships for the greater interest of bribing human rights abusers so Canada can have a seat where nations manipulate world events to suit their singular agendas of division and hatred.

Just as he sought to soft-peddle Canada's position in urging Iran to meet its international obligations to bring closure to the families of the dead on board the Ukrainian airliner. And in the interests of being a friend to anyone whose influence could be bought at the United Nations, bowed and scraped in amity to the foreign minister of a country whose warped designs in assigning itself power and recognition, supporting terrorism and designing intercontinental ballistic missiles to threaten the world with nuclear warheads can be overlooked for a seat on the Security Council.

Enabling the Islamic Republic of Iran to use the photographs and video of a smiling, ingratiating Prime Minister of Canada to show its disaffected Iranian public that the government they would prefer to unseat has friends in the West. An Iranian public horrified by the deaths caused by their government of Iranian citizens and foreign citizens, and who have protested the conditions under which they are forced to live by a theocratic regime whose malevolence on the world stage is without question. And whose brutality can be seen in the fact that 1500 Iranians were killed during the protests. But smilingly countenanced by Canada's wish to rejoin the Security Council.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shakes handing with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif at the Munich Security Conference, Friday Feb 14, 2020.   IRNA