Father who lost daughter, wife on Flight PS752 calls on international court to investigate it as a war crime

A spokesperson for the association representing families who lost their loved ones in the destruction of Flight 752 says Canada is taking too long to pursue justice, and families are taking matters into their own hands. 

The wife and nine-year-old daughter of Hamed Esmaeilion, who immigrated to Canada in 2010, were killed in January 2020 when Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 with two surface-to-air missiles, killing all 176 passengers.

On Wednesday, lawyers representing the families put forward a submission calling on the International Criminal Court to investigate the case as a possible crime against humanity or war crime.

Esmaeilion spoke to Stephen Quinn, the host of the CBC's The Early Edition, on Thursday.

The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

What efforts have been made since then to pursue justice for your family and for other Canadian families?

If you ask about the family members, I think they did everything they could as a survivor, but if you ask about the government ... what I have experienced in the last 32 months is that they are not serious. They are not serious about pursuing justice for the victims of PS752. There were 29 children onboard ... imagine that 29 Canadian children don't go to school for the third year. I can't imagine why they don't pursue justice for all these victims.

What have we seen the Canadian government do so far, and where have they failed or fallen short?

If you review the last three years, you remember the controversial meeting in Munich and the problematic 400-page report they published. The FBI had to see that they applied Magnitsky sanctions on the perpetrators. All the signals they sent to the families are wrong and not acceptable. Last week, we heard that the vice president of Iran, her son, is in Vancouver; at the same time, families of victims can't obtain visas to come to the second anniversary. This is not acceptable.

Why do you think the Canadian government, then, has been reluctant to act as quickly and forcefully as you and other family members of victims would like?

Because I think this is a Canadian story. There were like 138 passengers coming to Canada, and the majority of them were students — very talented boys and girls. They were the future of Canada. I know every single one of them now, and I know they all spoke two to three languages. Compared to all the aviation disasters in the last 80 years, this is the first case that has no criminal investigation and no safety investigation.

Right, the government launched a forensic probe, but not a criminal investigation and the conclusion was that there wasn't evidence that proved that the air strike was premeditated.

Yeah, that was problematic. We said to the government during the last meeting we had with the prime minister on the second anniversary, "Why did you put that there when there is no evidence?"

What evidence do the families have that shows that the downing of this flight meets the threshold of a war crime?

First of all, the onus was on Iran to show everyone that it was a human error. They failed to do so. All the reports that Iran has published, there is no evidence to prove that it was a human error. If they had any evidence, they would have shown it to the world a long time ago.

[On the night of the incident], there were five other countries that they [Iran] had flagged — Germany, Australia, Russia, Qatar and Turkey — all of them members of NATO. Ukraine was the only one, and there were no Americans onboard. There were two Boeing planes that night —Ukraine and Qatar — so they had planned this very, very smart and very vicious, and I'm very sorry that the government doesn't understand that.