Sunday marks three years since Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) fired two surface-to-air missiles at a civilian airliner over Tehran, killing all 176 people on board.
Most of the passengers on Ukrainian International Airlines flight PS752 were traveling to Canada. Fifty-five Canadians and 30 permanent residents died when the plane was destroyed – some of them young children.
Many of the victims’ families have spent the past three years channeling their grief into lawsuits. They say they have put in about 28,000 hours of volunteer work searching for answers, organizing protests and pushing for justice.
Hamed Esmailion is a spokesman for the association representing the victims’ families in Canada. His nine-year-old daughter Riera and his wife Parisa Egbalian died when flight PS752 went down.
He said the families should not have pushed so hard for the government to take action or go to extremes such as hiring a former police detective and writing An informative report of more than 200 pages.
“This is the first time in the history of aviation that the families of the victims have to go and find military experts and aviation experts and provide this kind of report,” Esmeilion said.
“It is too heavy for a grieving man’s shoulders.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke privately with the families on Friday. He told them the government would stand with the families until the end, Esmailion said.
Still, families have a list of unfulfilled demands. The government accepted some of their demands, but not all.
Here’s how those requests stand now.
Listing the entire Korean Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group
The US did it. There are reports that the UK will. The European Union is considering it.
In 2018, the House of Commons passed by a large majority a resolution demanding that the government list the entire IRGC as a terrorist organization. The Trudeau government supported this conservative movement.
But despite the proposal and relentless appeals from victims’ families, politicians and activists, the Canadian government has not designated the entire Iranian paramilitary organization as a terrorist organization under the Criminal Code.
Minister of Justice David Lametti told a press conference last year that the government was afraid that listing terrorists in the code would be too “dull” a tool. He said some Iranians were forced to serve in the IRGC at a low level and the government did not want to target “innocent people”.
The government said it was instead taking another route, using provisions of the Immigration and Refugee Act to target individual members of the IRGC.
Hamed Esmailion’s wife, Parisa Egbalian, and daughter, Reera Esmailion, died on flight PS752. (Submitted by Hamed Esmailion)
Esmaeilion said the families still want the entire IRGC to be listed and an exemption for low-level conscripts.
“I know there are some legal complications,” he said. “But they’ve had plenty of time to fix those issues.”
Liberal MP Ali Ehsasi, chairman of the House of Commons foreign affairs committee, said he personally wanted to see the IRGC listed in its entirety, in line with other countries.
“Given that the UK has indicated that it will, I fully expect the government to take a sober look at this,” Esasi said.
Initiate a criminal investigation
The victims’ families have called on Canada to launch its own criminal investigation. The RCMP has said it wouldn’t happen.
RCMP Commissioner Brenda Luckey told the families that the case was too difficult and complicated to investigate on Canadian soil because Iran was the only country with access to evidence collected from the site of the destruction in Tehran.
RCMP Commissioner Brenda Luckey said the case would be too difficult to investigate on Canadian soil. (Chris Wattie/The Canadian Press)
Nearly three years ago, Ukraine asked Canada to establish a joint investigative team. The RCMP told CBC News that the government’s legal advisers concluded that would not happen because “the concept does not exist in Canadian law.”
The RCMP said its officers are instead supporting Ukraine’s investigation and sharing evidence.
The government also released two reports examining the destruction of the plane, including an eight-month “forensic examination.” The Transportation Safety Board of Canada also released its findings.
Referral of the case to the International Court of Justice
Along with three other countries that lost citizens on the plane, Canada announced a week ago that it would seek formal arbitration with Iran.
If the parties do not settle the dispute by the end of June, the parties could move forward with taking the Iranian regime before the International Court of Justice, a civil tribunal that hears disputes between states.
The victims’ families say they’re glad to see it happen — but it has to have happened much earlier.
“Unfortunately, the Iranian government has not been the least bit cooperative,” Ehsasi said. “These processes take time and it is important for us to accept that when the Prime Minister says this is a priority of our government, that is exactly the intention of our government.
Almost two years after Flight PS752 went down, Canada and other affected countries released a statement confirming that the regime in Tehran would not engage in negotiations and concluding that future attempts at reparations talks with Iran would be futile.
The families have long argued that Iranian authorities would not cooperate and that Ottawa should have moved on to other legal options much earlier.
Frustrated with the government’s pace, the association representing the families also took matters into their own hands. It submitted an application calling on the International Criminal Court to investigate their case as a possible war crime or crime against humanity.
How did the UN aviation agency respond?
The 36-member council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) (of which Canada is a member) has not yet condemned the destruction of Flight PS752.
Unlike the council unanimously adopted a resolution in 2014 “condemning, in the strongest possible terms, the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17” more than three months after it was shot down over Ukraine.
ICAO said a country would have to submit a proposal for other countries to accept or reject.
No country has done this – including Canada.
Mohammad Aminiya shows photos of himself with his 31-year-old fiancee Masoume Gavi. (CBC)
“One hundred and seventy-six people were killed there and their silence, their inaction, we can’t take it anymore,” said Mohammad Aminiya, whose fiancee died on flight PS752, at a demonstration outside the ICAO office in Montreal on Thursday.
Transport Minister Omar Alghabra’s office said it had “clearly and unequivocally condemned Iran at the ICAO Council for its actions, its handling of the tragedy and its failure to provide credible answers afterwards”.
The victims’ families also want a representative of the Iranian regime removed from ICAO. Algabra’s office said it was up to the UN.
The families also want the UN aviation agency to produce its own investigative report. ICAO said countries must first propose and agree to help fund such a report.
Has Canada Sanctioned Iranian Officials?
Trudeau announced last fall that the government would target the top 50 percent of IRGC members — approximately 10,000 officers and senior members — and permanently ban them from entering Canada under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
The move came after weeks of mounting public and political pressure. Families of the victims held demonstrations, including one on Parliament Hill, calling on the government to prevent IRGC members and their relatives from using Canada as a safe haven.
Esmaeilon says the victims families applauded the move but added that the government announced multiple rounds of sanctions only after anti-regime protests erupted in Iran and around the world in response to the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. She was arrested by Iran’s so-called morality police and died in custody in September after allegedly wearing her hijab incorrectly.
“When they saw tens of thousands of Iranian Canadians on those streets from Halifax to Vancouver, I think it was an eye-opener for a lot of people,” Esmailion said.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joined demonstrators in October as part of a global “human chain” organized by the PS752 Family Association in solidarity with anti-government protesters in Iran. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press)
Since Amini’s death, Canada has imposed sanctions on 84 individuals and 24 entities in Iran “for their support of the regime’s outrageous behavior,” Global Affairs Canada said.
Alghabra’s office said it had imposed sanctions on “numerous Iranian individuals and organizations since 2010.” and since then the sanctions have been extended “several times”.
Add Comment