Nothing plausible about Iran's claim jet was shot down accidentally, family of Winnipeg victim says

A Winnipeg man in mourning for his fiancée, who was killed when a passenger plane was shot down in Iran last year, is disappointed by a Canadian official's suggestion that human error is "a plausible explanation" for the plane's downing.

"With due respect to her, she has no right to put [forth] almost the scenario of plausibility on this faulty and full-of-lies reports from Iran," said Kourosh Doustshenas, a director with the Association of Families of Flight PS752 Victims.

"She's gone very overboard to almost sort of indirectly defending it."

His fiancée, Forough Khadem, was among those killed when Ukrainian International Airlines Flight PS752 was hit outside of Tehran by Iranian missiles, killing all 176 people on board, including 57 Canadians. Eight of them were from Winnipeg. 

Doustshenas was responding Thursday to comments earlier in the day from Kathy Fox, chair of the Transportation Safety Board of Canada.

Fox said while "Iran provided no evidence to support" its contention the plane was shot down accidentally in January 2020, "it is a plausible explanation of what happened."

Iran treated plane as 'hostile target'

She was speaking at a news conference in Ottawa Thursday where she criticized Iran's investigation into the doomed flight.

In a report released Wednesday, the Iranian civil aviation authority concluded the plane was shot down accidentally after being "misidentified" by an air defence unit as a "hostile target."

Fox stated the report offered no detailed explanation or evidence for why two surface-to-air-missiles were launched at the plane shortly after it took off from Tehran's main airport in the early hours of Jan. 8, 2020.

Doustshenas believes the evidence of an accidental firing doesn't exist because that's not what happened.

He said there's a history of deceit surrounding the shoot down. In the days after, Iran denied it was responsible for downing the plane, but eventually admitted it fired at the Ukrainian jet — mistakenly, it said — during a period of heightened tensions between Iran and the United States.

The U.S. had just killed a top Iranian military commander, and Iran attacked a U.S. military base.

"They had 14 months to put compelling evidence in their report" to show the downing was accidental, he said.

"But in the absence of showing any evidence or any acceptable explanation, why [do] people keep on talking about plausibility of this scenario? Everything else is pointing toward this heinous criminal behaviour," Doustshenas said.

Family members of two other Winnipeggers killed in the crash feel Iran's investigation is incomplete.

"We don't accept this report as being true or just at all," said Kara Sadr. Her nephew Noojan Sadr and sister-in-law Farzaneh Naderi were killed when the plane was shot down.

Mo Sadr, Kara's husband, said Iran's airspace should have been closed at a time of increased military activity.

"I evaluate it in my brain so many times," Mo Sadr said. "If they think everything is imminent, why they don't shut down the airspace, and they let planes leave or come?"

Canada has assembled a team to conduct its own forensic examination of the sequence of events that led to the crash.

The Sadrs are hopeful that report, which the government says will be released in the near future, will present an accurate portrayal.

But every time the tragedy is in the news, it dredges up painful memories, Kara Sadr said. 

"We think about those few minutes that they were in the plane after the initial [missile] strike, and we pray that they did not know what was going on. We pray they did not suffer at all."

Doustshenas said he appreciates Canada's support thus far, but he is committed to seeking justice and truth.

He wants Canada to conduct a criminal investigation of its own against the Iranian regime, or take Iran to the International Court of Justice.