Families of Canadians Killed in Jet Downed by Iran Get $84M

Update: Families of six of the Canadians killed in a January 2020 shooting down of a Ukraine International Airlines flight in Iran have been awarded $107 million Canadian (approximately $84 million), plus interest, in compensation. A Canadian court awarded the money, and it's not clear how it will actually be collected from Iran, but a lawyer says Iranian assets such as oil tankers could potentially be seized in Canada or abroad, the BBC reports. All 176 people on board died, including 55 Canadians and 35 permanent residents of Canada. The same court ruled in May that the plane's downing was an intentional act of terrorism, the CBC reports. Our original story from July 12, 2020, follows:

Iranian investigators are blaming a misaligned missile battery and miscommunication between soldiers and their commanders for the Revolutionary Guard shooting down a Ukrainian jetliner in January, killing 176 people. The report released late Saturday by Iran's Civil Aviation Organization comes months after the Jan. 8 crash near Tehran, which authorities for days denied having hand in. The shootdown happened the same night Iran launched a ballistic missile attack targeting US soldiers in Iraq, reports the AP, its response to the American drone strike that killed Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. At the time Iranian troops were bracing for a US counterstrike and appear to have mistaken the plane for a missile. The report detailed a series of moments where the shootdown of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 could have been avoided.

The report said the surface-to-air missile battery that targeted the Boeing 737-800 had been relocated and was not properly reoriented. Those manning the missile battery could not communicate with their command center, they misidentified the civilian flight as a threat and opened fire twice without getting approval from ranking officials, the report said. “If each had not arisen, the aircraft would not have been targeted,” the report said. Western intelligence officials and analysts believe Iran shot down the aircraft with a Russian-made Tor system, known to NATO as the SA-15. The report notes that the Ukrainian flight had done nothing out of the ordinary up until the missile launch, with its transponder and other data being broadcast. “At the time of firing the first missile, the aircraft was flying at a normal altitude and trajectory,” the report said.

(More Iranian Revolutionary Guard stories.)