DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — An Iranian court docket has sentenced an air protection commander allegedly liable for the lethal downing of a passenger aircraft amid Iran-U.S. tensions a number of years in the past, a state information company reported Sunday.
Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard mistakenly shot down the Ukraine Worldwide Airways flight in January 2020. The missile strike killed all 176 individuals on board and got here as Tehran and Washington teetered on the point of battle.
The Guards commander who officers purport ordered the strike was sentenced to 13 years in jail, the official judiciary information outlet stated.
Mizan stated the commander didn’t observe protocols within the moments main as much as the capturing down of the aircraft. The commander was ordered to pay fines to households of victims, the report added.
Mizan stated the court docket additionally sentenced two personnel allegedly concerned in working the surface-to-air missile system Tor M-1 to at least one 12 months in jail every.
After a prolonged sequence of hearings, the court docket sentenced at the very least seven different personnel and air protection officers to as much as three years in jail. In line with Mizan, the verdicts are appealable inside 20 days.
The report didn’t establish any of the defendants by title or additional particulars.
The judiciary information company additionally stated Iran’s authorities plans to pay $150,000 for every sufferer to their households. It didn’t elaborate on how this cash will probably be delivered to the households.
The listening to classes have confronted worldwide criticism since beginning in 2021. At the moment, an affiliation of the victims’ households additionally criticized the listening to and forged doubts on the court docket’s legitimacy. The group additionally alleged that not one of the defendants have been current at hearings.
Simply hours earlier than the shootdown in January 2020, Iran had fired ballistic missiles at American bases in Iraq in retaliation for the U.S. drone strike that killed high Iranian normal Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad.