December 31, 2021
A new report in Canada accuses Iranian authorities of tampering with the electronic devices and misidentifying the remains of some of the passengers killed on Ukrainian Airlines Flight 752.
The findings are among new revelations contained in a lengthy report by the Association of the Families of Flight PS752 Victims that examines the January 8, 2020, shootdown of the commercial airliner by the Pasdaran.
Meanwhile, Iran started the trial of 10 Pasdar officers the regime has charged with negligence leading to the shootdown.
All 176 people on board the Kyiv-bound airliner were killed when the Boeing 737-800 was shot down by a surface-to-air missile fired by the Pasdaran minutes after the plane took off from Tehran’s Imam Khomeini airport.
Those killed included 55 Canadian citizens, 30 permanent residents as well as nationals of Iran, Britain, Ukraine, Afghanistan and Sweden.
The new report says several mobile phones and tablets of dead passengers showed signs of tampering in what could have been an attempt to cover up evidence that victims recorded in the last minutes of their lives.
The families enlisted a retired Toronto police homicide detective, Mark Mendelson, whose consulting firm examined a laptop and cellphones returned to the families. He concluded the devices “showed evidence of human manipulation” and showed no evidence of burn patterns or other signs of damage consistent with the plane slamming into the ground.
“The fact that these memory/data components are missing is not consistent with damage caused by a sudden and hard impact. Moreover, the fact that screws were removed and covers pried open strongly suggests that concerted efforts were made to extract these components, rendering a review of data impossible.”
The report also says Iranian authorities botched the identification of some of the victims. “The association has obtained evidence that DNA testing on some victims’ bodies did not match their stated identification by Iranian authorities,” the report says.
“This neglectfulness on the part of the government of Iran has had serious psychological consequences for families, some of whom did not receive the whole bodies of their loved ones and were given the remains of other victims instead.”
The military trial of the 10 Pasdar officers began November 21. When the session ended, there was no announcement of when the second session of the trial would be held.
The trial judge, Ebrahim Mehranfar, told the courtroom that all the families of the victims had been notified of the trial and invited to attend. But some relatives were protesting outside the courthouse saying they were barred from attending, according to Iran International. Some of them complained that only low-ranking officers were being tried, although an announcement months ago said two generals were among the 10 accused.
Some of the relatives said Maj. Gen. Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Pasdar Aerospace Command, should be tried for refusing to close Iran’s airspace that night.
Many of the families assert that the Pasdar consciously decided not to close Iran’s airspace, hoping that commercial aircraft in the skies would deter the United States from attacking Iran after Iran fired missiles into an air base in Iraq used by the US military. No Americans were killed in that attack. In reality, President Donald Trump never considered attacking Iran that night.
Meanwhile, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly joined counterparts from Sweden, Ukraine and the United Kingdom in criticizing Iran’s refusal to meet last month to negotiate reparations.
“We remind the Islamic Republic of Iran that it must fulfill its international legal responsibility to make full reparations to the group of countries and thus reiterate our call to negotiate in good faith and to do so before the end of the year,” the group said in a joint statement November 24.
“Should Iran continue to avoid negotiating with the group, the co-ordination group will have no choice but to seriously consider other actions and measures to resolve this matter within the framework of international law.”
