UN Mission Urges Iran To End Crackdown On Dissent

“We independently filed our claim before the International Criminal Court and support the four affected countries’ referral to the International Court of Justice,” the Association said in a statement. 

“Those who ordered and carried out the crime [involving] the Ukrainian airliner will not be left alone,” Javad Soleimani who lost his young wife Elnaz Nabii in the tragedy tweeted Wednesday and said suing the Islamic Republic was a very important step to attain justice for which the Association made great efforts. 

“They murdered 177 innocent civilians, blatantly disrespected their remains, looted and robbed their belongings, lied for three days until they were exposed and continued to subvert justice, the Association of Families of Flight PS752 said in a statement Wednesday. 

“The Islamic regime staged show trials at an unqualified and partial military tribunal to convict an unknown patsy for negligence and failure to obey orders, and sentenced him to ten years in prison,” the statement said and thanked the four countries and their legal team for “working steadfastly towards their commitment to truth and justice.”

Some of the victims’ families held a seminar in Toronto Wednesday entitled Flight PS752, Our Mission: Truth and Justice and said they would gather at the city’s Mel Lastman Square to remember the victims. 

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The Association’s statement was released after the announcement of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the same day that it received a joint application by Canada, Britain, Ukraine and Sweden which constitute the International Coordination and Response Group for the Victims of Flight PS752 against the Islamic Republic of Iran concerning the dispute over the downing of the flight on January 8, 2020 which killed all 177 onboard including an unborn child. 

In a press release Wednesday, ICJ in the Hague, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations often referred to as the World Court, said the applicants claim that Iran has violated a series of obligations under the Montreal Convention because of the shooting down the civilian aircraft by military personnel of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) on January 8, 2020. 

They also say Iran subsequently failed to conduct an impartial, transparent, and fair criminal investigation and prosecution consistent with international law. 

“Iran must be held to account for their actions and we will continue to fight for the transparency, accountability and justice that victims' families deserve,” Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, Melanie Joly, tweeted after the announcement. 

In a tweet Wednesday, UK ambassador to Tehran, Simon Shercliff, said the legal action reflects his country’s unwavering committed to achieving transparency, justice and accountability for the families of the victims. 

Iran's hardliners have been comparing the incident with the downing of Flight IR655 on July 3, 1988, by the USS Vincennes. All 290 people onboard the Airbus were killed. 

“With today marking the 33rd anniversary of the shooting down of the Iranian civilian airplane #IR655 which resulted in the death of 290 passengers and crew including 66 children, those who were shedding crocodile tears after the Ukrainian plane crash are nowhere to be seen,” a Twitter account bearing the name of Brigadier General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, the Revolutionary Guards Aerospace Commander at the time of the incident, said on July 3. 

Flying from Bandar Abbas in southern Iran towards Dubai, the UAE, IR655 was shot down during the Iran–Iraq War (1980-1988). The United States claimed the Vincennes crew had incorrectly identified the Airbus as an attacking Iranian Air Force F-14 Tomcat and that the airliner was targeted after ten attempts to contact the aircraft both on military and civilian frequencies to no avail. 

US President Ronald Reagan sent a written diplomatic note to the Islamic republic shortly after the incident and expressed his deep regret for the shooting down of the plane and declared that reparations or compensation to the families of victims were "a matter that has to be discussed."

The IRGC-affiliated Tasnim news agency reported on Wednesday that Salehi's sentence had been commuted from execution to imprisonment due to his "active cooperation" with authorities.

However, Roza Etemad Ansari told Sharq daily that the report was untrue, stressing that the case is "in progress" and has not been closed yet.

The artist who has become an icon of the latest unrest has been detained for more than 240 days, and in late June, his trial was held behind closed doors. He could face the death penalty.

Salehi, 33, is an artist mostly known for his protest songs about Iran's social issues and injustice by the government and was arrested on October 30th as part of the crackdown on opponents in the wake of mass uprisings across the country. 

His arrest came shortly after his interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, calling the regime "a mafia that is ready to kill the entire nation... in order to keep its power, money and weapons.”

In his politically charged songs such as “Buy a Rat Hole” (2021), he spoke out against repression, injustice, poverty, and authorities’ own corruption and impunity from prosecution.

On June 22, representatives of the German, Austrian, New Zealand, and Italian parliaments, who have become Salehi's political sponsors, announced that the court proceedings concerning the singer's charges were held 230 days after his arrest without media coverage or official notification.

Sharq daily quoted an Afghan girl living in Tehran telling the story of being abducted by machete-wielding men in a car while their trunk was "full of hair bags".

She said: “I was coming home from school. Showing a knife, they took me into the car... There was a lady and a gentleman. When I got in, the two other girls were just crying…The man cut the hair of all three of us with scissors and tied it up.”

In recent years, Iranian media reported the increase in buying and selling women's hair due to financial needs, but there have been fewer reports of girls' hair being stolen.

Earlier and separate reports on the Khorasan and ISNA news websites said most of the hair reaches extension production companies in Turkey, Arab countries, China, Europe or even some countries of the Americas.

With the deepening economic crisis in Iran, in recent years, local media have repeatedly reported the "sharp increase" in the sale and purchase of body parts in Iran.

Jahan-e-Sanat daily wrote in May that some middlemen send the prospective donors to neighboring countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Iraq to sell their body parts for $7,000 to $15,000, the result of the country’s economic crisis, which has left many people struggling to survive.

The death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September 2022 while in the custody of the country's morality police unleashed a wave of mass protests across Iran, marking the biggest challenge to the Islamic regime in decades.

Since then, several people have been hanged for participating in the unrest, and other detainees still face the danger of capital punishment.

"We call on the Iranian authorities to stop the executions of individuals convicted and sentenced to death in connection with the protests and reiterate our requests to make available to us the judicial files, evidence, and judgments regarding each of these persons," Sara Hossain, chair of the Iran Fact-Finding Mission, told the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The mission also called for the "release all those detained for exercising their legitimate right to peaceful assembly and for reporting on the protests".

Responding to the statement in comments to the Council, Kazem Gharib Abadi, secretary general of Iran's High Council for Human Rights, called the establishment of the fact-finding mission last year "an entirely politically motivated and unacceptable move". He then walked out of the session in protest.

The Iranian representative in the session complained about the use of the word "regime" for the Islamic Republic in several occasions until the chair of the session said he no longer allows such interruptions.

In May, Iran executed three men it said were implicated in the deaths of three members of its security forces during the demonstrations.

With reporting by Reuters

According to an investigative report by Sharq daily citing official sources, 108 women were killed by their husbands, 17 by their brothers, nine by their sons, 13 by their fathers, and 19 by other men in the family.

The findings, which reveal how deeply domestic violence has become embedded in Iranian society, show that on average, a woman was killed by a man in her family every four days.

Out of 165 women who were murdered, 43 were shot, often with hunting rifles, pistols and even Kalashnikovs. Another 40 were stabbed to death and 35 were strangled either by hand, scarves and bedding.

Six women were set on fire, either by pouring gasoline directly on them, or setting fire to the car or the house where the victim was staying. Another 41 victims were killed in other brutal ways such as hammer blows to the head and body and mutilation. Only in 11 cases did the killer commit suicide after the crime.

Family disputes have been quoted as the cause of 87 cases out of 165 murders while 38 cases have been deemed as honor killing, 10 murdered due to financial issues and 30 others where there is no clear cause for the murder.

Perpetrators of honor killings are often not brought to justice in Iran as most families do not demand harsh punishment for them, particularly if the perpetrator is the victim’s father.