Iran announces payments of US$150,000 to each family of Ukraine plane crash victims
- Iran admitted that its military had mistakenly fired at the Ukrainian aircraft during heightened tensions between Iran and the US
- The plane was carrying 167 passengers and nine crew members from several countries
Iran’s cabinet has created a compensation fund to pay the families of the 176 victims of a Ukrainian passenger plane that was shot down by Iranian forces outside Tehran last January, the president announced Wednesday.
Iran will pay US$150,000 for each victim, state TV reported, without specifying a timeline. The announcement comes as the victims’ families prepare to mark the anniversary of the January 8 crash. Diplomats from nations that lost citizens will also push Iran for more cooperation on the investigation and compensation issues.
There was no immediate comment on the announcement from the five countries in talks with Iran about reparations.
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Ukrainian experts examine plane crash site in Tehran
For days, Iran denied that its military was responsible for downing the plane. But with extensive evidence emerging from Western intelligence reports and international pressure building, Iran admitted that its military had mistakenly fired at the Ukrainian aircraft at a moment of heightened tension between Iran and the United States.
Hostilities had reached a fever pitch the week prior when an American drone strike killed top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad, raising fears of further violence in the region.
Western intelligence officials and analysts believe Iran shot down the aircraft with a Russian-made Tor system, known to Nato as the SA-15. Tehran blamed “human error” for the shoot-down, saying in a report released over the summer that those manning a misaligned surface-to-air missile battery wrongly identified the civilian flight as a threat and opened fire twice without approval from ranking officials.
Canadian authorities allege that Iran has not disclosed all relevant evidence or provided satisfactory answers to a number of lingering questions, including the identities of those held responsible for the downing, the exact chain of events that led the Revolutionary Guard to open fire and the decision to leave Iranian airspace open to civilian traffic the same night that Iran launched a barrage of ballistic missiles at US forces in Iraq.