Iran Indicts 10 Officials Over Shooting Down Of Ukrainian Commercial Airliner

Iran’s military prosecutor said that 10 officials have been charged with shooting down a Ukrainian airliner last year.

According to the international media reports, an Iranian military prosecutor Gholam Abbas Torki while reported the development said that they will be produced before the court soon, but the military prosecutor declined to name the suspects.

He said that 10 persons will face disciplinary action in which they may be dismissed or their tenure may be reduced.

On Tuesday, Shokrollah Bahrami, head of the Judicial Organization of the Iranian Armed Forces, confirmed that the case had been settled in a military court and that an indictment had been issued.

Referring to the Iranian New Year starting March 21, he said that insha’Allah, the case will be heard in the new year.

It should be noted that on January 3, 2020, the head of Iran’s Al-Quds Force and a very important commander Qassem Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike, along with the Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi Al-Mohandes.

Tensions in the Middle East had risen since the death of Qassem Soleimani.

On January 8, 2020, in response to the death of General Qassem Soleimani, Iran fired 15 ballistic missiles at two US and allied military bases in Iraq and claimed to have killed 80 Americans.

A few hours later, on the same day, a Ukrainian passenger plane flying from Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport crashed, killing all 176 people on board.

The Ukrainian prime minister confirmed that 176 people were on board, including 167 passengers and nine crew members.

The Ukrainian foreign minister said the plane was carrying 82 Iranians, 63 Canadians, Swedes, four Afghans, three Germans and three British nationals, as well as 11 Ukrainians, including nine crew members and two passengers.

On January 9, Iran revealed in a preliminary investigation report on a Ukrainian passenger plane that crashed that it did not make a single radio call for help after a fire broke out in the passenger plane.

The Iranian investigative report said that a few minutes after taking off from Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport, a Boeing 737 of Ukraine International Airlines had a sudden emergency and crashed.

Later, on January 21, 2020, Iran admitted that it had shot down a Ukrainian plane, saying that it had been inadvertently hit by a “human error.”

The Iranian military said in a statement on state broadcaster that the crashed Ukrainian plane was flying near a sensitive military site belonging to the Revolutionary Guards and had been inadvertently hit by a human error.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani confirmed in a tweet on the social networking site Twitter that an internal investigation by the armed forces has concluded that the Ukrainian plane crashed as a result of tragic missiles fired by human error in which 176 innocent people were killed.

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