Canada is publicly acknowledging for the first time that families, including Canadians, who lost loved ones when Iran shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet in 2020, have asked the International Criminal Court to take action.
The Association of Families of Flight PS752 Victims announced last September that it had made a legal submission to the ICC prosecutor’s office to expand an investigation of alleged war crimes in Ukraine to include the Iranian missile strike that downed the Ukraine International Airlines plane. The incident happened as the jet took off from Tehran on January 8, 2020.
The strike killed all 176 people on board, most of them Iranians and Iranian Canadians who were flying to Canada via Kyiv. Iran says its forces mistook the plane for an incoming U.S. missile.
The prosecutor’s office at The Hague-based ICC has made no public statement about whether it has opened or intends to open a preliminary examination of the association’s nearly 12-month-old request. The ICC is a permanent international court governed by a treaty called the Rome Statute that investigates and tries individuals accused of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression.
