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Canadian court blames Ukrainian airline for jet downing
Iran calls ruling ‘fair’
The Ontario Superior Court of Justice has ruled that Ukraine International Airlines is legally responsible for paying full compensation to the families who lost loved ones in the downing of UIA Flight 752 in Iran in January 2020.
Flight PS752, carrying Canadian citizens and permanent residents, was shot down over Iran’s capital, Tehran, by the Iranian Revolution Guards Corps in the early hours of January 8, 2020, at a time when military tensions with the United States were rapidly escalating. The Ontario Court found that UIA was negligent for failing to conduct a proper assessment of the risks of operating the flight out of Tehran.
Justice Jasmine Akbarali ruled that UIA’s negligence was grounded in the fact that hours before the departure of Flight 752, Iran had launched ballistic missiles against US forces in Iraq in retaliation for the assassination of Iran’s top anti-terror commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani and was on high alert for a counterattack. The judgment followed an 18-day trial in Toronto that ended in January 2024.
The plane was shot down by Iran’s air defenses, which mistook the aircraft for a military target amid tensions between Tehran and Washington following the US assassination of the late legendary commander in Iraq days earlier.
Iran subsequently acknowledged that the mismanagement of an air defense unit’s radar system by its operator was the key human error that led to the accident.
Dehqan noted that the incident was a mistake in which the Ukrainian airline played a role. He said that Tehran welcomes the ruling that will be used by Iran in the international Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), where two cases have been brought against the Islamic Republic on the Ukrainian jet.