Iran has filed a lawsuit with the International Court of Justice in The Hague against Sweden, Ukraine, Canada and the United Kingdom. The application concerns a decision by the UN aviation agency ICAO in March, which ruled that it had jurisdiction over the matter and accused Iran of “using weapons against civilian aircraft in flight”.
STOCKHOLM APRIL 17: Iran has filed a lawsuit with the International Court of Justice in The Hague against Sweden, Ukraine, Canada and the United Kingdom. It is a countermeasure against the countries that filed a lawsuit against Iran last fall for the shooting down of a Ukrainian civilian aircraft in 2020, in which 176 people died, 17 of whom were residents of Sweden.
Iran’s application concerns a decision by the UN aviation agency ICAO in March, which ruled that it had jurisdiction over the matter and accused Iran of “using weapons against civilian aircraft in flight”. Iran now wants the International Court of Justice in The Hague (ICJ) to rule that the agency has no jurisdiction over the matter and to overturn the decision.
On board were people from the four countries that have sued Iran. Plane PS752 was shot down by Iranian air defenses on January 8, 2020, shortly after taking off from Tehran. Three days later, Iran admitted that its military fired two surface-to-air missiles at the Kyiv-bound plane but said it was “by mistake”.
Tehran said in its application to the ICJ that its military had downed flight PS752 “unintentionally and due to human error”. Tehran added that its military had been in “a period of heightened military alert… in anticipation of a possible attack by US military forces”.
Britain’s foreign ministry had welcomed ICAO’s March decision, saying it took the countries “a step closer to holding Iran to account for its illegal downing” of the plane.
In a separate case, the four countries dragged Iran before the ICJ in 2023 asking the court to make Tehran pay “full compensation” to the families. In 2020, Teheran offered to pay “$150,000 or the equivalent in euros” to each of the victims’ families.
Image: Mehr News Agency
