Ten Iranian servicemen have been sentenced to between one and 10 years in prison for their role in the crash of the Ukrainian Boeing shot down near Tehran in January 2020, the Judicial Authority agency said on Sunday.
The first defendant, the commander of the Tor M-1 defense system, was sentenced to ten years in prison for having defied orders from his superiors by shooting down the plane, and nine other servicemen were sentenced to terms ranging from one to three years in prison, Mizan Online reported.
The defense system commander “fired two missiles at Ukrainian flight PS752, contrary to command post orders, without obtaining authorization and in violation of instructions,” the source added.
The Judicial Authority agency did not provide details on the identity of the convicted, including four defense system officials, a commander of an air defense base or an officer from the control center.
On January 8, 2020, the Iranian armed forces shot down the plane flying between Tehran and Kiev, causing the death of 176 people on board the plane, the majority of them Iranians and Canadians, many of them binationals.
The judicial authority had announced in November 2021 that the trial of ten soldiers “of different ranks” had opened in Tehran. On the night of the tragedy, Iran’s air defenses were on high alert.
The Islamic Republic had just attacked a base used by the American army in Iraq in response to the elimination five days earlier, in an American strike in Baghdad, of General Qassem Soleimani, craftsman of the regional strategy of Iran, and Tehran expected a response from Washington.
