A Canadian court ruled that Iran must pay $ 107 million to the families of six Canadian citizens who died in 2020 when a Ukraine International Airlines passenger plane shot down shortly after it took off from Tehran.
All 176 people on board lost their lives after the plane was hit by two surface-to-air missiles launched by mistake by the Revolutionary Guards. Over 100 of the Iranian victims had Canadian citizenship or residency, and some families decided to sue Iran in a Canadian civil court.
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The Iranian authorities initially denied responsibility for the accident, which occurred on January 8, 2020. But following protests from the population, the Psadaran Air Force had to admit that one of their air defense units had mistaken the Boeing 737-800 for a American missile.
At that moment, Iran’s air defenses were in a state of maximum alert because Tehran had just launched ballistic missiles at two military bases hosting US forces in Iraq in retaliation for the killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, who was assassinated by an American drone Baghdad airport.
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Despite the state of alert, however, the Iranian authorities had not closed the airspace to civilian flights, a decision that cost the lives of 176 people.
For the victims a symbolic recognition
Last year, the Ontario Superior Court ruled that the downing of the passenger plane by the Iranian military was an “act of terrorism,” allowing families to circumvent Iran’s legal immunity and demand compensation. Foreign countries are normally immune from lawsuits in Canadian courts.
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Judge Edward Belobaba, reports the local press, has established a compensation of seven million dollars for compensatory damages to be added to the 100 million for punitive damages for the families who started the lawsuit in Ontario. “This court understands that damages do not in the least replace the lives that have been lost,” the judge said in the ruling, dated December 31.
The families are unlikely to be able to receive damages from Iran, but – the Canadian press points out – the sentence has symbolic significance for them, while the family’s lawyers hailed the court’s decision as “unprecedented in Canadian law” .
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